August 22, 2008 (Beijing, China) – If there is one voice that speaks to the international world in cycling it is that of Phil Liggett – veteran cyclist, journalist and broadcaster. He brought the Tour de France, to Britain first, and then to rest of the world. Liggett is covering cycling for Channel 7, a private broadcaster in Australia during the Beijing Games. But while the world of pro and Olympic cycling may be where he is most visible, it is the townships of South Africa where his heart resides at a place called Velokhaya. This is a program he started which means “Cycling Place or Home” in the indigenous languages of the children who live there, and just minutes before he had to go on air Liggett indulged me with the beautiful photographs of the children who participate in the program. He is like a proud father.

Liggett grew up on the Wirral peninsula in Cheshire County in Northern England, not far from Chester, Manchester and Liverpool. “The first time I got a job in London I told my mother I would be back by the weekend,” laughs Liggett. “Everyone knew northerners don’t move to the south. Well, here I am after all these years still living in London.”

He says as a boy he came to cycling late. “I was fifteen when I first started riding a bike. In 1961 I joined the New Brighton Cycling Club near Liverpool, which is nowhere near Brighton. It was a lovely area to cycle. Before that I had no sportsmanship ability. I was totally hopeless at any ball game. I couldn’t swim, and still can’t swim. But I got permission from my school to go cycling for forty minutes, so there I went, out the school gates.”

At eighteen he left school to work at the Chester Zoo. “I wanted to be a zoologist, but my family could not afford to send me to school so I became a zoo keeper instead. I rode to work and rode to school. It was 22km one-way to the Chester Zoo, and it really was one of the best zoos ever.”

After this Liggett became a trainee accountant and rode to work at that job as well, but he loved bike racing and said to his boss, “I’ve got to be a pro in Belgium.” Off he went, along with a number of other British cyclists who were racing on the continent. “I was always writing free of charge for news magazines. There were a lot of good cyclists racing. It was only forty kilometres across the channel to Belgium, but it was long distance. I used to wait for the operator by the telephone for two and a half hours, and the magazines always called collect.” In those days the only way to get a story to an editor quickly was to read it over the phone. There were plenty of races on Saturdays and Sundays so Liggett ended up reporting late Sunday night – racing in the events he was also covering.

In 1967 he was offered a job at Cycling and Moped Magazine. “It was the year I was going back to Belgium as a pro. I was twenty-three years of age – I passed on the cycling contract and became part of Fleet St.” That was the moment, forty-one years ago, that he told his mother he’d be back north by the weekend.

“I never came to journalism thinking I would have a job in commentary. My editor always told me, the day I came late to the office to do paperwork on Sunday night, was the day I was sacked. Sometimes I would drive two hundred kilometres from the race to the office. I was at the magazine three and a half years when out of the blue I received a call. Would I be interested in organizing the Tour of Britain Milk Race? I got the job and organized the race for the next twenty-two years. The pay was a three-day a week salary, but the job was five days a week, so I still worked free-lance as a journalist.

“But we realized that nobody knew what was going on during the race. People didn’t know what they were looking at. So I picked up a microphone. Suddenly I was offered all these jobs. BBC Radio approached me to do some work for them.”

In 1973 ITV asked him to do commentary on the Tour de France for the first time, “but in those days we are talking about a twenty-minute summary at the end of each week, so that is what I did.”

In 1978 David Sanders, who was a personal friend of Liggettt’s, died. He had been ITV’s main sports director, and the television company asked Liggett if he would take over. “For two years I would wake up and think, “˜I can’t stand these voice-overs,’ then one day I woke up and I said, “˜I really love this job.’”

The work kept coming his way. In 1980 he covered the Moscow Olympics. At that time he was working with Adrienne Metcalfe, who was head of sports at ITV. After the Olympics, Metcalfe met with Liggett and said the magic words that would take Liggett’s career to an international level. “Adrienne said to me, “˜Could you guide us through cycling? We want to cover the Tour de France live every day.’ I became my own director, producer and commentator””all from France. We had an audience of over two hundred thousand. We went live for the first time in 1982. That worked up to 3.1 million once Lance became involved in the tour and we’ve been live ever since.”

He joined forces with Paul Sherwen, another British pro cyclist who had retired from European competition, and they’ve been a team ever since. At the Beijing Games they can be found together in Channel 7 blue Oxford shirts, broadcasting for the private broadcaster in Australia. He’s worked for many years for Channel 7 and 9 in Australia and was voted best commentator at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics working for them. In 2000, Outdoor Life Network became involved as Lance Armstrong started to dominate the Tour. “I called all of the Armstrong years. The viewership became huge,” says Liggett. “We broadcast into millions of homes that would never watch cycling. These were numbers a cable network would never see.”

Since Armstrong retired viewership has declined fifty per cent, but, says Liggett, you have to remember that OLN has gained fifty per cent too as they opened up a whole new audience.

To recover from the demanding life on the road with the tour, Olympics, and other cycling events, Liggett disappears into his country house in South Africa. “It’s sixteen kilometres to the nearest road – very remote. I can sit on my verandah and watch lions and elephants walk by. I have twenty acres there, but this is twenty within three million acres of wilderness. I’ve made sure the bush stays indigenous. Any flowers we have planted are indigenous flowers. We have three generations of worthogs living under our porch, and I do not ride my bike there. I put it in the car and drive out to the road. One friend was riding when a lioness took too much interest in him. He is lucky to be alive. I sit there with my wife and watch the natural world walk by. Ligget’s dream of becoming a zoologist came true after all.

But it wasn’t enough to go to South Africa to be with the lions – Liggett brought his love of cycling and how could he not? “We’ve nearly finished making a BMX track in the townships. I went to town council and told them “˜the track is nearly ready’, now let’s get the kids out.” We raised one hundred thousand rand to buy bikes, that’s around $10,000 US. We have 200 brand new BMX bikes. Every time Team CSC wins a Tour stage they send three thousand Euros to Velokhaya. We sent six kids to the Tour de France and they all go to the South African championships. I say to the kids, “One of you is going to be riding in the 2012 Olympics and I’ll be the commentator.” They have to keep their school marks up too in order to stay in the program. We call that program the Life Development Cycling Academy. It’s out of Durbin in East London, South Africa.”

Descente and Cervelo are also on board with CSC as sponsors of the program. When he’s not getting kids on bikes, Liggett also raises funds for Havit, which is a South African home for abandoned babies whose mothers have HIV/AIDS. “We do a one day ride of three hundred and twenty kilometres. It’s very tough. I have to get up very early to do it. But we had twenty-five celebrities on the last ride and raised quite a lot of funds.”

I asked Liggett if he thought there was any connection between his own experiences growing up on very limited funds and his commitment to children who have so little today. A knowing look crosses his face. “I’ve never seen myself as a star in sports, but my mother told me once, “˜You’re not like ordinary boys.’ She’d be very proud of me now if she knew about the children in South Africa.”