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Outside Magazine, July 2004
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2004 Tour de France: The Ultimate Guide
They're Dancing on the Pedals (cont.)

ONE THING'S FOR SURE: These gents are having a good time. Phil, now 60, and Paul, 48, both grew up outside of Liverpool, England, and they attribute their dry humor to their North Country origins. "I used to race against these big guys," Phil recalls, "and they'd start whistling. ‘This putting you off?' they'd ask. And I'd say, ‘No, I'm rather enjoying it.' And they'd say, ‘Oh. Then I'll stop doing it.' I suppose that's where I learned how to make a quick comeback."

For the millions of American fans who seek a window
Their chemistry is what makes them so fun to watch. Paul keeps the ball rolling during the 23-day race, because sometimes Phil just won't stop shouting.
into the strongly European world of pro cycling, Phil and Paul are it. Because of OLN's syndication agreements with ITV in Britain, SBS in Australia, and a host of other international networks, their voices are heard in nearly every country in the world. They work at all the major races, usually together, which keeps Phil on the road more than 200 days a year, and Paul about 150.

If you haven't heard the pair in action, Phil is the one who sounds like Monty Python's Eric Idle, his voice raised to Shakespearean heights and always moving at Mach 1. An avid cyclist himself, he raced as an amateur in his teens but gave up on a pro career at 22, because he had the fear of God put into him by one of his contemporaries, the great Belgian rider Eddy Merckx—"a man of extreme talent," he recalls. These days, Phil likes to pedal the country roads around his home, just north of London, where he lives with his wife, Pat, a onetime Olympic speed skater.

Phil's earliest ambition was to be a zookeeper. But in 1967, he got a job as a cub reporter with Cycling and Mopeds magazine, in London. Before long he'd moved on to ITV, where he landed in front of the camera one day in 1978, reporting on a London bike race, and discovered he was good at it. In short order, ITV made him their main commentator for the Tour, and over the next few years his verbal acrobatics impressed enough network suits that he was asked to report on cycling for the BBC at the 1984 Summer Olympics, in L.A. By the nineties he was covering skiing at the Winter Games for CBS.

Paul began as a cyclist as well but stuck with it a little longer than Phil. He suffered through seven Tours (his best finish was 70th, in 1978) and was an excellent sprinter, he says, but in the mountains he couldn't keep up with the likes of five-time French champion Bernard Hinault. Still, he won two British national championships, in 1986 and '87, and became something of a multitasker: In 1986, while he was still racing professionally, the UK's Channel 4 hired him to help Phil manage the herculean task of covering the Tour. The two have been a team ever since, even with Paul's periodic extracurricular activities, like working as the PR director for Armstrong's Motorola team in the mid-nineties and, in 1999, lending help as a translator when Lance was having trouble with the French media during his first Tour win. But his line-crossing days are over; now he splits his time between covering cycling and running a gold mine in Uganda, where he and his family live.

The chemistry between the two men is what makes them so fun to watch. Phil gets caught up in the rich pageant of the race; Paul brings a calm, analytical voice to the proceedings. Phil likes to prognosticate when a race is in its closing minutes, often only to watch the exact opposite unfold; Paul, with his insider's grasp of the complex game being played, seems to be able to predict when a rider is going to attack—or bonk—just from the look in the cyclist's eyes. In short, Paul keeps the ball rolling during the 23-day race, because sometimes Phil just won't stop shouting.


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