Introduction
Mark Beretta spent 22 years as the sports presenter on Sunrise, Australia’s number one breakfast television show, before stepping away from the desk in December 2025. He is also a ten-time Australian water skiing champion, a Major in the Australian Army Reserve, a board member of the cycling charity Tour de Cure and, most recently, an ambassador for the Butterfly Foundation, where his focus is the rising rate of eating disorders and body image pressure among young men.
In this episode of Don’t Let The Old Man In, Mark sits down with Pod O’Sullivan to talk about reinvention, the year he lost his father and watched his mother’s cancer diagnosis unfold, and the small habit, learned from his dad, that has shaped every chapter of his working life.
Why this conversation matters
Mark Beretta built a career most Australians know from the outside: three a.m. starts, Olympic Games, 22 years anchoring the sport desk on the country’s biggest breakfast show. What’s less visible is the thread running underneath it, one he traces back to advice from his father: get in the habit of saying yes. That habit took him from competitive water skiing to Channel Seven, and it’s now taking him somewhere new again, onto the board of a cancer charity, into a uniform with the Army Reserve, and into a role speaking directly to young men about eating disorders and body image, an area he calls the “great unseen problem” in men’s health.
The past two years have tested him in ways the cameras never did. He lost his father last September, and has spent that time supporting his mother through a stage four cancer diagnosis her oncologist calls close to miraculous. Mark talks candidly about what that compounding loss and care did to him, and the simple advice that got him through it: just breathe, minute by minute.
For a midlife audience, the conversation lands close to home. Many DLTOMI listeners are navigating their own version of what Mark describes: aging parents, a body that doesn’t behave the way it used to, and sons who are absorbing pressures around image and fitness that didn’t exist when their fathers were that age. Mark’s work with the Butterfly Foundation is a reminder that the conversation about eating disorders isn’t just about daughters. It’s about sons too, and the men who don’t yet have the words to say something’s wrong.
What we discuss
- Why Mark left Sunrise after 22 years, and what service now means to him in this next chapter
- The advice from his father that shaped his whole career, and why saying yes has mattered more than saying no
- Losing his father last September, and caring for his mother through a stage four cancer diagnosis
- How Tour de Cure went from one bike ride at Martin Place to $165 million raised for cancer research
- Why he joined the Army Reserve in his late forties, and what service to country has taught him
- His new role as a Butterfly Foundation ambassador, and why eating disorders in young men are still under-discussed
- What 30 years in front of a camera, including the Beaconsfield mine disaster and the aftermath of Cyclone Yasi, taught him about the responsibility of an audience’s trust
Why midlife men should listen
If you’ve reinvented yourself once and wondered whether you have another one in you, this episode is worth the hour. Mark doesn’t pretend the last two years have been easy, and he doesn’t pretend service work is a cure-all. But he’s built a genuinely full life on the back of one simple instinct: say yes, then work out how to be useful once you’re there.
Whether that’s a conversation with your own sons about body image, or finally doing the volunteering you’ve been meaning to get to for years, there’s something here worth taking with you.
Guest info
Mark Beretta
Mark Beretta OAM is a journalist, television presenter and one of Australia’s most recognised sports broadcasters. He spent 22 years as the sports presenter on Sunrise, Channel Seven’s breakfast program, after joining the network in 1995 and covering 13 Olympic Games along the way. He stepped back from the Sunrise desk in December 2025.
Mark is a ten-time Australian water skiing champion and a silver medallist at the Singapore International Masters. He has served as a board member of the cycling charity Tour de Cure since 2011, riding in the event’s annual 1,400-kilometre fundraising ride most years since 2010, and in 2021 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for that work. He joined the Australian Army Reserve in 2019 and now holds the rank of Major. Mark is also an ambassador for the Butterfly Foundation, where he focuses on eating disorders and body image among young men, and the author of two books, The Riders and Mark Beretta’s Greatest Moments in Australian Sport.
He was born and raised in Geelong, Victoria, and now lives in Sydney with his two children.
