Paul Sherwen joined me for broadcasts of the Tour DuPont.
Paul Sherwen – “The soundtrack of a generation”
The voice of Paul Sherwen, the late cycling broadcaster has been repeatedly called the “soundtrack” for a generation of cycling fans. He died in his sleep this month from heart failure, leaving legions of fans shocked by the news.
My personal connection to Paul Sherwen
I doubt Paul would have remembered me, but I remember him. During the Tour DuPont in the mid-1990s, Paul would travel with the race from city to city. Each city had a television media sponsor, which would agree to broadcast the stage of the race that ended in that town. (In my case Roanoke and Blacksburg, Va.) The station would provide half of the broadcast team (me) and Paul would be the other half.
It was important to have an actual analyst because few folks in the U.S. had any idea what bike racing was about.
I thought I did. But that was a joke.
Add in a bunch of strange European names and us stateside broadcasters were like a lost ball in high weeds.
Exhibit A: A top sprinter from the time named Djamolodine Abdoujaparov.
Go ahead. Try to say it.
Here’s another. Viacheslav Ekimov.
He actually won the Tour DuPont in 1994. Became an Olympic gold medalist. But who knew this stuff back then?
Paul said, “Just call him Eki.”
It was all so new
WSLS-TV was the TV station of record for those three years. Since I was the only cyclist here at the local NBC affiliate, it fell to me to produce and host our coverage. Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech and near some awesome mountain roads, also earned a stage, so for two days in May when Sherwen and the race arrived, I was his broadcast partner.
Cycling at the time…
Greg Lemond was at the end of his career.
The new American threat was a guy named Lance Armstrong.
You may have heard of him.
But probably not back then.
Someone else you never heard of — unless you were a bike geek, like me, was Davis Phinney. At one time he had won more stages of the Tour de France than any other American.
So he was pretty good.
Davis and Paul shared the job of working with the local broadcasters. In 1994 I did the broadcasts with Phinney.
After that, it was all Paul.
But, since world cycling was not televised in the U.S. I didn’t know much about him. I knew he was a broadcaster and that he had competed in 7 Tours de France.
He clearly knew his stuff, like better than anyone – and he was funny.
Sherwen could switch from his British accent to a generic American dialect and off camera, he would sometimes to a classic southern “Bubba.”
Paul Sherwen and Lance Armstrong
Paul Sherwen was connected to Lance Armstrong and brought him to me for interviews ahead of the world media.
Paul was a savior in more ways than one. During the early portions of a 3-4 hour race, Paul and I would chat about cycling and throw to local stories that had roots in the race — or at least local cycling. As the riders got closer Paul would pick up the play-by-play and nail the call for the finish. He knew all the players.
In 1996 we were set up across the street from the finish line near the Patrick Henry Hotel in downtown Roanoke. We watched the riders come closer to town from the helicopter-mounted camera and a series of cameras on motorcycles that beamed images back to a big screen for spectators in downtown — and onto the monitors in our broadcast booth. It was all so easy.
Then a thunderstorm hit.
Just as the race was ending, the rain fried half of our electronics. All of the monitors in the booth went to black and there was nothing to see. The riders hadn’t come into view and the television feed was gone to a crisp.
But just before that happened an amazing sprint was setting up with Armstrong in the mix.
So Paul leaned out of the booth, caught the riders coming around the corner on to Jefferson Street screaming the finish as Lance took first in the sprint over the favored and then world number 2 ranked Tony Rominger.
First to Armstrong
The other great thing about Paul is that he did the PR for the Motorola team.
That was Lance’s team.
So while the world waited to talk to the up-and-coming American and the winner of the Tour DuPont in 1995 and 1996, Paul would sneak off and bring Lance to me for the post-race interview.
Before anyone else got to talk to him.
John 1
World media 0
The only time I have ever been able to say that.
Sherwen was the connection
Eventually, the cable networks discovered us — the bunch of crazy Americans who would actually commit their lives to watch the Tour de France for three weeks in July.
Not just watching it, but living and dying with every cobblestone, every sprint, every mountaintop finish.
Armstrong’s rise obviously helped.
But so did Paul and his broadcast partner Phil Liggett.
They were on for hours at a time — often with nothing more to talk about than the French Countryside or whether a rider was, being, “a bit dodgy-podgy.” There were endless discussions of whether the days’ breakaway would succeed, with Paul endlessly doing the math in his head and the winner often tipping the line less than a second ahead of whoever was in second place.
Even if it wasn’t close, Sherwen could build an atmosphere of suspense to the point that you could not turn off the TV until you knew the result.
Even if the winner was the most nobody rider in the field.
You had to know.
That’s the part about the soundtrack of a generation. When the Tour was on, the TV was on. Paul and Phil were on, their British voices never seeming to stop. Somehow they always had something to say.
Hour after hour.
Paul was my personal connection to the tour. I loved to talk about how I had done some bike race broadcasts with him. I wondered If I e-mailed him if he would remember his time in Roanoke and the spectacular call of the finish in the rain.
I’ll never know.
But thanks to hours and hours of watching and listening, I have his voice in my head. His knowledge of the sport and just a wee bit of understanding of the man that knew so much about the misunderstood sport of bike racing.
Sherwen truly was the soundtrack of my generation.
