Q&A: Bob Roll

By Guest Blogger
Jul 02, 2009

This summer, after the doping scandals and Lance Armstrong's three-year hiatus, cycling—and Tour De France—is back. And the man dishing out the color commentary is Versus’ Bob Roll. A former Tour rider who is now in his ninth year as a broadcaster, Roll, 48, called all seven of Armstrong's Tour wins—always referring to the race as the Tour Day France. He’s known in the cycling community as Bobke, has a flair for wild gesticulations while talking, and spouts one-liners with Don Rickles–like aplomb: “Kilometers are passing like kidney stones,” “Lance Armstrong is the eye of the hurricane and he's headed straight for the Jan Ullrich trailer park.” In other words, the most interesting person to watch at this year’s Tour may be the man in the broadcast booth. —Will Palmer

When you're at the Tour, you're not exactly known for speaking perfect French. Do you have any animosity toward the French?
Oh, that's just kind of a runaway thing. When we were racing over there, we said "Tour day France" because that's just the way we talked amongst ourselves. And then ten years went by and I hadn't changed my pronunciation of the event, so when I started doing television I found that people didn't like it that much. But me, personally, I love France. I love covering the Tour, I love the country of France.

Some of the suspended riders are back at the Tour this year. Do you think the talk about drugs might start to go away?
It's been tough on the sport of cycling. But now, it's funny, other sports have been found to be much more abusive in their use of illegal substances, and they're much more lackadaisical in the actual prosecution, in the face of pretty compelling evidence. So as far as whether or not drug scandals will continue to haunt cycling? It'll probably always be a part of not just cycling but all sports. With the controversy with Alex Rodriguez, cycling was instantaneously pushed to the back burner. And they haven't even scratched the surface in a sport like football. In a sport like tennis, or golf, or Formula One racing... they all have really powerful players' unions that don't allow the intrusive nature of the anti-doping efforts that are absolutely essential to guarantee that people are watching an authentic spectacle. Cycling is the cleanest professional sport in the world. If you look at the riders involved in doping scandals at the Tour de France last year, every single rider who was involved in drugs was caught. So you have 189 starters, and five were caught; I think that's pretty indicative of the pro peloton—I think that's probably the percentage of riders who are willing to risk all of the controls that are in place to try to do a little bit better. So I hope people will start to realize that, and then the sport can really be seen as an authentic, gritty, dynamic, athletic competition that people can be passionate about without any qualms about it being authentic.

How did you come to have those crazy hand gestures?
From living in Italy as a racer; that's how people talk and I just adopted it. That was the last moment of aural development that my brain was capable of, in my twenties, and it just happened to be that the last formative years of my life were spent in Italy. The brain has a capacity for development throughout its trajectory, but that's when behavior patterns can still actually change. ... People said that I was doing that, but I didn't know what they were talking about. I can't disagree, because it's pretty consistent, but I have to say that it's totally subconscious. And I work with Phil [Liggett] and Paul [Sherwen], who are British, and they don't use their hands—I think it's just a British characteristic that you speak with your mouth, and you use your hands to work. The Italians throw everything in the mix.

Like Phil and Paul, you've started to be known for your figures of speech, or Rollisms. Do you have a favorite one?
My current favorite is "Work hard, rest easy." Look for that in a TV show near you.

Bob Roll will be announcing the Tour de France, July 4–26, for Versus. Follow their coverage online.

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