Tag: phil liggett

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Stage 6: Your Phil Liggett Quote of the Day

Today’s quote is a nonquote. As the racers neared the steep climb leading to the stage finish in a place called Super-Besse, two riders were about 15 seconds off the front. One was Christian Vande Velde, an American from Team Garmin-Chipotle, the other a rider from the French team Saunier Duval, Leonardo Piepoli. The last climb began with about 1.5 kilometers to go, and Liggett sung the praises of the American. “This could be a brilliant move by Christian Vande Velde, and it could have hit them at the right time.” Phil explained how the spectators had to walk to the upper reaches of the hill. “And they’re seeing one of only four Americans in the Tour de France turn on the style in the race for the next yellow jersey,” he said.

Meantime, what’s the camera showing the folks at home?

The front of the peloton was surging forward as several of the stage favorites, including the perpetually mispronounced Alejandro Valverde, made their bid for victory. The front of the group swirled past Vande Velde and instantly dropped him.

What did Phil have to say about that?

Well, nothing, actually. He opined that the wearer of the yellow jersey, Germany’s Stefan Schumacher, wasn’t reacting. The TV picture almost instantaneously contradicted him, as you could see the yellow jersey in the bunch surging past the spent Vande Velde. In fact, Phil never mentioned Vande Velde’s name again until a couple minutes after the finish, when he thought he might have recognized him crossing the line. (And in fact, he missed that call, too: Vande Velde had finished just 23 seconds after the stage winner, Riccardo Ricco of Saunier Duval.)

That’s it? That’s all that brilliant move came to?

[Later: Versus’s Paul Sherwen observed after the end of the stage that Piepoli’s attack, made along with Vande Velde, was probably meant to put pressure on the lead group and help Ricco. It wasn’t until Versus’s Robbie Ventura tracked down Vande Velde in the finishing area that Vande Velde explained that his surge, too, was meant to help a teammate: David Millar. But Millar never made a move–a fact that Liggett and Sherwen never remarked–and wound up finishing half a minute behind Vande Velde and 51 seconds behind the winner.

We should give Phil a break here. He’s an entertainer, not a reporter. He’s a fan, not an expert. He manages to convey the excitement of the moment even when he’s not quite sure what’s happening or why. There–we said something nice about him.]

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Stage 5: Your Phil Liggett Quotes of the Day

Play-by-play moment: Phil’s crowning moment in the finish of Stage 5 was to correctly call the winner as the sprinters crossed the line–Mark Cavendish of Team Columbia–then to immediately change his mind: “Cavendish is there! And he’s done it! It’s Ciolek! It’s Ciolek on the line! It wasn’t Cavendish! Gerald Ciolek has taken it.” And there matters stayed for the next minute or so as Phil and Paul Sherwen watched replays: “Well, that was a tremendous finish. Gerald Ciolek is also here to win for himself, as he has now proved. He is also a lead-out man for Mark Cavendish. That was a superb … Look at the man at the back there, the champion of France, desperately, desperately close [after 220 kilometers or so in a breakaway] … and … that looks like Mark Cavendish to me, Paul. Well, I thought he was Cavendish first of all, I reversed to Ciolek, and I’m coming back. Mark Cavendish has won the stage for Great Britain. Absolutely superb, he delivered.”

That wasn’t quite as bad as mistaking which team just scored the deciding touchdown in a football game, but it was close.

Remove the carrots from the fruit basket: [As the peloton closed to within 30 seconds of a three-man break about nine kilometers from the finish of Stage 5] “Any second now the referee will ask for the removal of all vehicles behind those three riders to give them one last chance to hold off the peloton, remove all the carrots from the fruit basket up there, and leave the race to try and chase them down. The riders at the back of course just want to get to Châteauroux and enjoy the shower today.”



Some call them gams: “Somewhere, the champion of France has found some power in those pistons we call legs.”

Tour wedgie: “Nineteen seconds lead, just inside 4 kilometers from the finish, and Team Columbia have got hold of the Tour de France by the scruff of the racing shorts.”

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Phil Lisps; We Investigate

So, the greater re:Cycling community is closing in on the sources of Phil Liggett’s seemingly strange pronunciation of Alejandro Valverde’s first name. When Phil says it, it comes out “Alethandro.” As commenters to the earlier post on this crucial matter remarked, Castilian Spanish does in fact turn some “s” and “z” sounds into “th.” A leading theory, therefore, is that Phil thinks Alejandro is really Alessandro–he does sometimes say “Alessandro Valverde”–and converts the (erroneous) “ss” into “th.”

That habit would account for his turning the middle name of Juan Mauricio Soler into “Mauritheeo,” too.

Maybe. We will stipulate that the matter of pronouncing “cross-language” proper names for broadcast is one fraught with confusion, difficulty, and the clash of inalterably correct opinions. re:Cycling has personal knowledge of a Bay Area radio outlet where editors have decided that the San Joaquin Valley town of Los Banos–LOSS BANN-ose in the local American argot–ought to be pronounced LOHSS BAHN-yohz, a perhaps “authentic” Spanish pronunciation. The only problem comes when you call the city hall or the newspaper in town–both English-speaking institutions–and are universally greeted with the American version of the name. And never mind the fact that the station in question broadcasts not in Spanish but in English. As I said, the subject vibrates with the potential for debate.

So who can say Phil is wrong with his Alethandros and Maurithios?

We can.

First, note that Phil is probably misapplying his ounce of knowledge about native pronunciation in the former case and perhaps in the latter one, too.

Second, note that it’s commonplace to adopt a modified form of foreign names when they’re spoken in another language. So even if Alejandro were pronounced Alethandro in a major dialect of Spanish, it would be more appropriate for an English-language broadcaster to adopt a version that conforms to a standard translation. In English, Alejandro — the j sounding like an h — conforms to such a standard. (Here’s another example, French to English: Say the name of the capital of France. If you’re a native English speaker, we’ll bet you a shrinking U.S. dollar you did not unconsciously say “Pa-ree.”)

Third, note that no one else on the air with him shares his lisping habit with these names. His fellow broadcasters are conforming to the standard.

And fourth, consider one piece of evidence from Spain. We had the idea that maybe the website of the Spanish paper El Pais would have video clips from the Tour in which the names of Valverde and Soler might be pronounced by a real live Spanish person. We were not disappointed. The video clip from Stage 1 features Valverde, and there’s no question about how it’s pronounced: in the non-lisping, non-Phil way. The video clip from Stage 2 mention’s Soler’s crash. The evidence is less clear, but give it a listen. To our impaired American ears, it sounds like the voiceover says Maurishio or Mauricio, but definitely not Mauritheeo.

With that, we certainly hope the matter can be put to rest. Alas, we know Phil won’t let it be.

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Stage 4: Your Phil Liggett Quote of the Day

Phil on watching the Stage 4 time trial: This is the one day you don’t want to be out on the road, you want to be behind your television screen because we can explain everything.

–Versus also explained that the length of today’s stage, 29 kilometers, is equivalent to the distance from Mesquite, Texas, to Dallas. Oh, yeah–that helps!

–Versus’s chirpy Robbie Ventura rode along with Garmin-Chipotle team director Jonathan Vaughters to watch the ride of David Millar. After Millar went through the second time check 14 seconds behind the leader. Ventura asked, “Jonathan, how’s this going for ya?” Vaughters let out a long breath and replied, “Fuck, man.” As Vaughters urged Millar on, Ventura reported, “You can feel the excitement in this car.”

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Your Phil Liggett Tour Quotes of the Day

From today’s Stage Three:

Phil on geography: “The River Loire is the big river here in France. It runs from the west, from the east rather, into the west. It’s 700 miles across. It’s the biggest river they possess.”

Phil’s rider profiles of the day: “Aleksandr Kuschynski here [half a dozen riders in the frame]. I think he’s rock bottom on the classification, isn’t he, overall? But that doesn’t matter, he’s a workhorse, too, for Liquigas, puffing and blowing in the middle of the peloton there at the head. [Camera has panned down to riders’ legs.] These look like the legs of Marcus Burghardt of Team Columbia.”

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Phil on the Tour de Franth

OK, these are small things. But: Yesterday we noted Phil’s insistence on pronouncing Alejandro (ah-lay-HAHN-droh to most English speakers trying to respect the name’s Spanish origin) as “Alethandro.” At first, you think, no, he can’t really be saying that. But he is, most of the time, and he persists no matter how many times his broadcast partner, Paul Sherwen, gives the correct (or at least less ridiculous) pronunciation.

But there’s a method to Phil’s lisping. When he says the name of Juan Mauricio Soler, the climber who won last year’s Tour King of the Mountains competition, he usually makes it “Mau-REE-thee-oh.” When I heard him saying this last year, I wondered whether he was on to some unique personal pronunciation of the guy’s name. Sometimes, though, he would make it “Mau-REE-tsee-oh” (as Sherwen does). I can’t figure any reason it would be anything other than “Mau-REE-see-oh.”

One can only guess that somewhere in the dim past, Phil decided or told that Spanish “j” and “c” are pronounced “th” except when you want to throw in some random consonant sound. What’s amazing to me is that for as long as the guy has been working bicycle racing, no one’s been able to correct him.

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Phil’s Liggett’s Quote of the Day

From the Versus Stage 1 telecast of the Tour de France:

“The beautiful scenery of Britanny now, remember we’re in Britanny now for three days, that’s what they’ve paid for and that’s what we’re gonna get and enjoy here on the Tour de France because these narrow roads constantly twist and turn, the undulations are very, very special here for all of the riders and 43 of them in their first Tour de France.”

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Phil’s Liggett’s Quote of the Day

From the Versus Stage 1 telecast of the Tour de France:

“The beautiful scenery of Britanny now, remember we’re in Britanny now for three days, that’s what they’ve paid for and that’s we’re gonna get and enjoy here on the Tour de France because these narrow roads constantly twist and turn, the undulations are very, very special here for all of the riders and 43 of them in their first Tour de France.”

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The Tour 2008

With an exception of one day, our TV service has been off for about eight months. The one day we broke down and turned it back on was Super Bowl Sunday, and that just served as confirmation that 200 channels or whatever it is of satellite television wasn’t anything we were missing. For the most part, anyway. I will admit that it’s a little weird to hear people talking about Colbert or “The Daily Show” and think, wow, we just don’t look at that anymore.

And the other thing I’ve realized is that, the vulgar excess of the Super Bowl aside, TV is very much the way I keep up with the sports I still follow. So: no baseball this year and very little sense of how the season is unfolding beyond sporadic reports that the Cubs are doing well and that that poor, poor pitiful team in Tampa Bay is really having a year.

Tonight, though, we are linked up again to the broadcast world. The reason is the Tour de France, broadcast again on Versus. The first stage was today, and we got reconnected just in time to see the tail end of the first rebroadcast of the day. A Spaniard named Alejandro Valverde won in an oddly configured finishing section–a sharp descent followed by a short sharp climb that kept the usual contingent of crazy sprinters out of the picture. Valverde took the stage with a shocking burst of uphill acceleration in the last 250 meters that blew away a rider who looked like he had the stage in the bag. And besides the wonderful action, I knew the Tour was back when I heard Phil Liggett, back for the umpteenth year of melodrama, mispronouncing the winner’s first name. At various times it seemed to come out not only as Alejandro, but also as Alefandro, Alessandro, and, most weirdly and regularly, Alethandro. Phil, I missed you.

Tomorrow’s stage broadcast starts at 5:30 a.m. here, and we’re having our traditional “first Sunday of the Tour” gathering with some neighbors.

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The Tour 2008

With an exception of one day, our TV service has been off for about eight months. The one day we broke down and turned it back on was Super Bowl Sunday, and that just served as confirmation that 200 channels or whatever it is of satellite television wasn’t anything we were missing. For the most part, anyway. I will admit that it’s a little weird to hear people talking about Colbert or “The Daily Show” and think, wow, we just don’t look at that anymore.

And the other thing I’ve realized is that, the vulgar excess of the Super Bowl aside, TV is very much the way I keep up with the sports I still follow. So: no baseball this year and very little sense of how the season is unfolding beyond sporadic reports that the Cubs are doing well and that that poor, poor pitiful team in Tampa Bay is really having a year.

Tonight, though, we are linked up again to the broadcast world. The reason is the Tour de France, broadcast again on Versus. The first stage was today, and we got reconnected just in time to see the tail end of the first rebroadcast of the day. A Spaniard named Alejandro Valverde won in an oddly configured finishing section–a sharp descent followed by a short sharp climb that kept the usual contingent of crazy sprinters out of the picture. Valverde took the stage with a shocking burst of uphill acceleration in the last 250 meters that blew away a rider who looked like he had the stage in the bag. And besides the wonderful action, I knew the Tour was back when I heard Phil Liggett, back for the umpteenth year of melodrama, mispronouncing the winner’s first name. At various times it seemed to come out not only as Alejandro, but also as Alefandro, Alessandro, and, most weirdly and regularly, Alethandro. Phil, I missed you. MIthed you, I mean.

Tomorrow’s stage broadcast starts at 5:30 a.m. here, and we’re having our traditional “first Sunday of the Tour” gathering with some neighbors.

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