When the Cape Argus/Pick ‘n Pay Cycle Tour comes to town, Cape Town becomes a sea of rotating movement. Phil Liggett’s voice is so synonymous with rolling wheels and buzzing machinery that it’s quite odd to meet him on a still day, way above a calm city centre.
With just a day to go before tens of thousands of cyclists would dominate the streets, Liggett invited me to his 32nd floor suite for this interview.
He’s finally bought a property in the town he says he fell in love with when commentating on his first Argus in 1989 and he was there with his first love, wife Pat.
Liggett in the flesh is just as friendly and open as his TV persona and he looks as fit as a cyclist — dapper and well-groomed, even in casual gear. It’s obvious that he feels a lucky man although there is no false modesty about him either.
He’s proud to report that he’s covered every day of the Tour de France since 1973. I’m astonished to learn that he has no support staff, no statisticians to feed him on-air information. Rather he trawls the Internet and plugs away at a programme that he’s developed for himself.
This do-it-yourself method fits nicely into Liggett’s biography. Brought up in Chester, he found he was ”totally useless at ballsports”. The Liggett family budget did not stretch to a motor car so Phil bought a bicycle. — ”largely to go fishing in Wales,” he says.
He can’t account for his gentle accent, very different to the broad vowel throat-clearing common to most of the citizens of England’s northwest. He went to a comprehensive school, his mother was Welsh and his father was a ”real Scouse”, but during his working stint in Chester, ”I had people ask me where I was from!”
That first job was as a zoo keeper and although he abandoned that career when it became clear the finance for university would not be forthcoming, Liggett has retained his love of animals. During the Giro del Capo he happened upon a great, hooded Cape cobra on the road, a sight he describes as ”the nicest thing I have ever seen”.
He didn’t hang around in his next job (accountant) before his love of cycling took him to Belgium, Europe’s hotbed of cycling professionalism. In 1966 he had two great life chances, but they were mutually exclusive.
Liggett had to choose between a professional cycling contract and what he describes as a ”super job on Fleet Street” as a cycling journalist.
Helping him decide was another cyclist, a Belgian by the name of Eddie Merckx. ”I knew that I could never compete with Eddie,” says Liggett, who rates Merckx the best cyclist of all time, well ahead of Lance Armstrong on his record.
Liggett knows he made the right decision: ”In hindsight it was for the best. I would not have become a millionaire riding bikes.” And he didn’t make his millions writing in Fleet Street either.
”I started off doing stadium commentary and then I was approached by BBC radio.” He cites no role model for his approach to commentary and says that he spends a lot of time ”educating the viewer”.
”Cycling can be a very complicated sport,” he says, ”so I try to pick on a particular rider and explain the tactics of his team.”
Liggett describes the Argus/Pick ‘n Pay field as ”very, very good” although it seems the really big names of world cycling will be beyond us as long as the rand stays a minor currency.
I have to report that Liggett’s prediction for the Cape men’s winner didn’t come through, but then he wasn’t to know that there would be a pile-up on the last stretch.
He remains a wonderful addition to television entertainment and a fine person to meet. Goodbye Argus. Bring on the Tour de France, and more of the Liggett’s calm narrative.
Malcolm Lange of Johannesburg (Team Microsoft) won the Cape Argus/Pick ‘n Pay cycle tour in a record Ou
Kaapse route time of 2 hours, 29 minutes and 56 seconds. This beat by two minutes the previous record of Douglas Ryder in 2001. Germans Armin Kroniger and Enrico Poitschke finished second and third. Anriette Schoeman of Port Elizabeth won the woman’s race for the fourth time in a row, holding off a challenge from Ronel van Wyk.