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The Story

A former amateur racer turned professional commentator, Phil Liggett has covered forty-seven Tours de France and fifteen Olympic Games. He made Australians stay up all night glued to the television. He has seen the giants of cycling come and go and he has outlasted them all. He has called every triumph, tragedy and scandal in the sport for half a century. Astonishingly poetic and whimsical, Phil’s flights of rhetorical brilliance on the microphone are the stuff of legend and are globally known as “Liggettisms”. Has anyone ever described the pain of the uphill climb, or the chaos of the sprint to the line with such grace or style? Phil Liggett has shaped the way the world sees cycling, and his name has become synonymous with the sport. Phil has no plans to retire and has found a new and urgent vocation saving endangered rhinos from poachers – but can this ever replace the thrill of calling the big races? But, like the Tour Down Under, that new passion is going to bring him back to South Australia. AFF regulars Eleanor Sharpe and Nickolas Bird who previously brought us the cycling masterwork Mamil in 2017, now they pose the question: How much longer can Phil continue to be the voice of cycling?