Monday, December 3, 2018

A Spot of Bother

SHERWEN: I don't like to feel that I'm commentating to the cycling fans because there's 50,000 to 100,000. I like to be commentating to your mom. I like to be commentating to a little old lady down the street who says, wow.
Mourning the passing of cycle racing commentator Paul Sherwen.




Most Bikecopblog readers are aware of how important cycling has been to the author. I know, right? BIKEcopblog. A cross-country ride over my Bikecentennial summer of '76. Rides with memories to last a lifetime. Bike patrol - night, day. Good weather, snow. Teaching, learning... In the company of forever friends.

Then, there is racing. Never having raced has not cooled my interest in the men and women who can make the bike fly.

I followed a man through much of Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming during that 1976 bike odyssey. He called himself "Pro Padre," but his real name was Glenn. He rode like the wind, a back wheel I could hold for only so long. In the hour-long runs between refreshments (mostly junk food) he would run out to a hundred yards ahead, me red-lined the whole time. Together we braved driving rain, hail, obnoxious (but very flirtatious) teenagers and too-many-beers-to-run-into-the-organizer intoxication. He made burritos we washed down with fable Coors beer and bought a duck call in a hardware store outside of Eugene.

We were camped in the shadows of the Teton Mountains, drinking beer and sitting by a campfire. Several road-weary riders asked to share our fire, and our site. We all got to talking. One of the visitors said "No shit!" and looked at me. "Do you know who this guy is?"

Me: "Glenn."

Him: "He's Glenn Griffin."

Me: "And?"

Him: "He was road racing champion of California!"

I didn't spend a lot more time with Glenn. Eventually he pressed ahead on a day I struggled. But, in the meantime he regaled me with tales of racing bikes, of training and striving and riding the dog-eat-dog pelotons in California.

I moved to Colorado, and followed racing here. The Red Zinger, Coors Classic. What was supposed to be a Quiznos race, except that Lance screwed it up by being a douche.

I watched the Tour de France on TV, helping my wife understand and then appreciate the subtleties of professional team bike racing. My partner in crime - an Englishman who'd grown up in Africa. Paul Sherwen.

He had a knack. Every rider was awesome, fabulous. They suffered doing a job of work. A struggling rider pedaled squares, and was in a spot of bother. His broadcast partner Phil Liggett has a bit of Frank Gifford in him - "It's first and ten at the forty... Or, is it first and forty on the ten?" Paul would seamlessly point out "That's actually [fill in a rider's name] when Phil had totally botched it, and we'd all forgive Phil.

They played off each other the way best friends do, two men watching the best cycling in the world next to someone who knows them better, perhaps, than their own family. Decades crammed into cars, commentary booths in small town Belgium and the billion watt "City of Light" as Le Tour heads down the Champs.

Paul taught us well, two avid fans sitting in our basement hanging on his every word. During the 2012 London Games Columbia's Rigoberto Uran led Kazak Alexandr Vinokurov to the line at the end of the road race, the usual game of cat and mouse evolving, a question of who would flinch under tremendous pressure. Who would jump first. Rigo looked left.

My wife leapt to her feet. "He's looking over the wrong shoulder!!"

Vino darted right, went full gas and won the gold.

How did she know that? Because, for years, we'd learned from Paul Sherwen. We were the couple he was broadcasting to, the ones he wanted to reach from so far away.

God bless you, sir. Ride like the wind.  

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