Voice of the Melbourne Cup

The race stops a nation – so imagine the pressure of commentating Australia’s biggest and most iconic race, the Melbourne Cup. With a global audience estimated at 50 million listeners, and more than 6 million Australians tuning in, the Melbourne Cup is the highlight of the Spring Racing Carnival. Matt Hill, one of Australia’s premier voices in race-calling, is in the box at Flemington to call the Cup in style.

The field of 24 runners over 3200m (two miles) makes the Melbourne Cup one of the more challenging horse races to call. With more than 20 years’ experience calling in Australia and around the world, Matt builds on the tradition of the doyens of the race-calling box – Greg Miles, Bryan Martin, Bert Bryant and Bill Collins, to name a few. In 2017, the Cup winner fitted a new prototype, as the European Rekindling, in the hands of Leviathan owner Lloyd Williams, took the race as a three-year-old. This deed was repeated in 2018, with English three-year-old Cross Counter taking the great race.

Priding himself on clarity, accuracy and a sense of theatre, Matt delivers a call that gets the hearts of punters and viewers everywhere pumping. Tune into the Melbourne Cup on the first Tuesday of November to hear him on free-to-air television, Sky Channel and almost every radio station in Australia.

Says Alan Thomas of Sky Channel Racing: “When you look at Australia’s top sporting commentators you’ll often find, first and foremost, they were race broadcasters – Ray Warren, Ray Hadley, Bruce McAvaney, Peter Donegan and now Matt Hill.”