Greg Rust
Greg Rust was born in Sydney, Australia and is the eldest of three children. His family has Scottish heritage on both sides. Greg's parents loved motorsport and would regularly take their children to the Speedway when they were growing up. He competed, as an amateur, in karting and rallying in his late teens an early 20's before a chance opportunity to do some commentary saw him move into broadcasting.
After several years calling over the PA system at Australian race tracks he began work on the Speedweek program for public broadcaster SBS in the early 1990's. In 1996 he commentated the support races at the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix for Channel 9 working under the late Darrell Eastlake and Barry Sheene. That appearance helped open doors at Channel 10, which at the time, was building a big portfolio of motorsport in its weekend programming. The following year was the first of what became nearly two decades of freelance broadcasting for Ten.
He went on to became Ten's frontman for Formula One and MotoGP in Australia and also played an integral role in the network's Logie award winning Bathurst broadcasts. His pit reporting is world class and he was ensconced in pit lane for the Supercars, the Australian F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne and the Gold Coast Indy Carnival. He also showed great versatility by earning frontline roles on the Sochi Winter Olympic coverage and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games as well as hosting the World Road Cycling and World Sailing Championships.
2015 saw a move to V8 Supercars Television in an all-round role presenting, commentating and pit reporting with the coverage aired through the category's broadcast partners Fox Sports, Ten and networks around the world.
That same year he made a cameo appearance as a podium announcer for the telemovie Brock working alongside Matthew Le Nevez in a fictitious recreation of the 1987 Bathurst race podium. A live interview of his from the Gold Coast Indy coverage was also used in the documentary Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman.
Originally trained at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and by legendary Aussie announcer Max Rowley, he has also worked for Sydney radio station 2GB, initially as a sports reporter and by the end of his three-year tenure he was daytime newsreader.
Live coverage of events, stories and documentaries has taken him all round the world to some of the most famous racetracks. In addition to motor racing legends like Mario Andretti, Valentino Rossi and Lewis Hamilton he is also extremely proud of live interviews with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Will Ferrell and Nicolas Cage.
Rusty is an obvious tag but his friend and colleague, the late Barry Sheene, also coined the nickname Thrusta (V8 champ Russell Ingall was already called Rusty by most people in the sport) and it stuck.