The Voice of Cycling is 82, still calling his 54th Tour de France this July, and just sat down with NBC’s Paul Burmeister for the most revealing interview series he has ever done.
If you have ever cued up NBC’s Tour de France coverage and immediately felt at home, that voice is the reason.
Phil Liggett has been calling professional cycling since 1973. NBC Sports just dropped a multi-part video interview called Beyond the Podium: The Phil Liggett Story, and cycling fans are already treating it like appointment viewing.
The series launched on June 26, 2026.
Only parts one and five are live so far.
The rest are drip-releasing across July.
Even in the incomplete state, it is a small treasure.
Buried in the interview is a single sentence that sums up Liggett’s entire approach to commentary.
"I don’t hear a voice, I hear the race," he tells NBC’s Paul Burmeister. That is not a rehearsed soundbite.
It is a description of how he has actually worked for five decades.
He does not memorize scripts.
He reacts to what unfolds on the road in front of him.
That is why he can name a rider from a jersey glimpse at 60 kilometers per hour, and why the mistakes he does make feel human rather than corporate.
The interview series lands right before the 2026 Tour de France, which starts July 4 in Barcelona. According to Velo’s confirmation of NBC’s 2026 lineup, Liggett will call his 54th edition this year.
For context, when Liggett first showed up at the Tour in 1973, Eddy Merckx was still winning. Bernard Hinault had not yet turned professional.
NBC’s rights deal with ASO runs through 2029. Liggett will not commit publicly to whether he will still be at the microphone by then.
Which makes this documentary series feel like a soft goodbye. Or a soft not-quite-goodbye.
Part one, hosted by Paul Burmeister, walks through Liggett’s upbringing.
It covers how he first got into cycling as an amateur racer, and how a series of magazine articles he wrote about his own races turned into a full journalism career.
The early sections revisit his time at Cycling magazine and his freelance work for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Observer.
Then come the Milk Race years, where Liggett served as technical director from 1972 to 1993.
That is not a career biography. It is a live archive of the sport itself.
His memories of early television coverage, when whole stages were reduced to three-minute highlight reels, land differently in 2026 when every kilometer streams live to a phone.
The gap between the technology he started with and what he calls today is genuinely staggering.
It is also part of why his voice still feels grounding in a modern broadcast.
Modern cycling coverage is drowning in data. Power files.
Live GC standings. Aero drag coefficients.
Liggett’s approach is refreshingly analog. His message in the NBC interview is that the racing itself still tells the story, no matter how much telemetry sits underneath it.
That is a strong position to hold in an era where the sport is professionalizing faster than ever.
If you want a sense of just how radically the business side has evolved, our breakdown of “There Is No Other Way”: UCI Moves to Lead Sweeping Reform of Professional Cycling captures the scale of the current restructuring.
Liggett has watched every previous version of that restructuring. He has narrated most of them.
For all the warmth of the interview, there are gaps.
NBC has only released two of what appears to be at least five parts.
The rollout is strange, with part five already public before parts two, three, and four.
Fans looking for a deep interrogation of Liggett’s most controversial commentary years, especially the Lance Armstrong era, will not find much of it in the segments released so far.
That story is public, well-covered, and clearly not the mood Beyond the Podium is going for.
This is a celebration, not a courtroom. Set expectations accordingly.
The Liggett era started with Merckx. It has stretched through LeMond, Indurain, Armstrong, Contador, Froome, and into the Pogačar and Vingegaard rivalry that defines the current Tour.
The physiology of the current generation is arguably unprecedented.
Our deep dive on whether Tadej Pogačar could be the fittest Tour winner in history lays out the case that the numbers Liggett is now describing on air are unlike anything the sport has ever produced.
That contrast is part of why the interview matters. The man is still the same.
The sport is barely recognizable.
Both released parts of Beyond the Podium: The Phil Liggett Story are on the NBC Sports YouTube channel. There is no paywall.
Each episode runs a compact 10 to 15 minutes. Perfect for a lunch break or an easy spin on the trainer.
Fans of the sport should watch part one first.
Newer viewers can start with part five, which lands more on Liggett’s philosophy of race calling than on his career biography.
The Voice of Cycling is not retiring, at least not from the Tour.
He announced in August 2024 that his Olympic commentary days were over, but the Tour still has him.
Which is why the interview series lands with unusual weight. It is not a farewell.
It is a lap of honor while the runner is still moving.
Cycling fans who grew up with Liggett’s voice in their headphones will find something quietly moving in it.
And if you have never really listened to what he actually says between the mistakes and the mangled rider names, this is the week to start.
There is a reason five generations of cyclists have grown up with the same man narrating their heroes.
He does not hear a voice. He hears the race.
That has been enough for fifty-three Tours. It will probably be enough for fifty-four more.
Perfect for the new riders!
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