Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen: Tour de France Announcers

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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.)

FOR PHIL AND PAUL, a typical day at the Tour de France begins at 6 a.m. Having traveled the night before from one finish line to the next—often arriving after the hotel's kitchen has closed—they rise, comb through the French sports gazette L'Equipe, and check out the cycling Web sites. By 8 a.m., they're off to the broadcast compound, to chat up other members of the international media caravan for news on the riders, medical reports, and any fresh scandals. Meanwhile, the OLN crew meets to go over their game plan—without Phil and Paul.

"Those guys don't like meetings," says John Carter, 38, the network's vice president of production and the only supervisory voice they hear during the show. "When someone's reached the level they're at, you can give them a certain degree of latitude. It's not for me to go in and tell Mr. Liggett, who's been doing this for 31 years, how to cover the race."

That freedom was the main reason Phil and Paul signed a four-year, $1-million-plus contract with OLN in 2001. "Most American networks want to see it all written down and delivered as written," Phil says, "but there's something exciting about knowing that if you say the wrong thing, you lose your job. The race is about to start and the adrenaline flows in your veins, just as it does in the cyclists' veins."

Their on-air skills are appreciated not just by viewers but also by some stateside colleagues. "It's amazing to watch those guys work, because pro cycling is their life," says Al Trautwig, 48, an announcer on the MSG Network who has worked with the duo several times since the 1989 Tour, and who will be hosting OLN's prime-time show in July. "I think of them as the Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully of cycling. Phil will say things about old Tours the way Vin Scully talks about baseball—‘I haven't seen that since Jackie Robinson did it in '51!' If you're not a baseball fan, you look at Vin Scully and go, ‘What?' Then you realize that this guy is the walking encyclopedia of his sport."

To become an encyclopedia means a lot of off-camera work. Phil and Paul compare notes before and after each stage, and they don't go anywhere without their PowerBooks, toting them into any Internet café they find to catch up on sites like CyclingNews.com. Files are kept on all the pro riders, and once the camera rolls, they both crib off their laptops while being fed other tidbits by Carter.

"I learned long ago that you can do all the homework you like," Phil says, "but when you're calling the race, you'd better hope it's gone into your brain, because you're not going to find the page you want when you need it."

The way Carter sees it, "There's no way to mold the story line to your liking. It's better to be reactive to the way the race is unfolding." Take, for instance, 1989, when Phil and Paul were covering the Tour for Channel 4, and Trautwig was doing ABC's prime-time highlight show. They had all become friends with Greg LeMond over the course of the race and were disappointed when he entered the final stage, a short time trial, in second place. To win the Tour, LeMond needed to make up 50 seconds on Frenchman Laurent Fignon.

"On paper, it was impossible for Greg to win," Paul remembers. "Theoretically, logically: 24 kilometers; slightly downhill; Fignon was a great time-trialist. There was no way Greg was going to win."

"We assumed it was all over," says Trautwig. "We were just sitting outside the trailer eating our sandwiches, and then my producer stuck his nose out and said, ‘You'd better get in here.' " It was the most thrilling finish any of them has seen, before or since: With a mind-bending effort, LeMond somehow made up the deficit and edged out Fignon by eight seconds.

"If a guy is going out and giving 110 percent of his body to try and succeed, then I want to make sure he gets his just deserts on television," says Phil. "I know what it feels like out there, when you have to hold on to the guy alongside you, and your legs are screaming in pain, and your lungs are dead. And they know what they've got to do to win a race—they know they are in extreme difficulty."

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