In the Tour de France, Catalan is spoken

BarcelonaTo Jonas Vingegaard, two-time winner of the Tour de France, the voice of Jordi Vidal (Barcelona, 1963) will surely sound familiar, as he is the announcer for the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, which the Dane won this year with a triumph in the general classification and two stage victories. Vingegaard has heard his name every day in the Volta while Jordi Vidal did his job as an announcer in front of the professional cyclists and the public at the roadside during the seven Catalan stages. The Volta has a lot to do with Vidal being the Catalan announcer for the three Tour de France starts in Barcelona, Tarragona, and Granollers this year, thanks to the recommendations of Rubèn Peris, the general director of the Volta. “Friend Peris recommended me to the Tour during my first year as announcer for the Volta in 2016, so that I would be the Catalan announcer for the arrival and departure of stages in Andorra,” Vidal explains to ARA.

Since then, whenever the Tour has touched Andorra, Vidal has always acted as a Catalan commentator, as happened in 2021. ASO, the company that organizes the Tour, always ensures that the local language is present when the Grande Boucle goes outside French territory. This year, when the Grand Dépard in Barcelona began to be discussed, Rubèn Peris presented Vidal's candidacy to do the Catalan commentary and they got in touch. At this year's stage of the Volta a Vila-seca, a representative from ASO met with him and with the journalist Sergi Valdivieso, who has specialized in cycling since 1977 at RNE, so that between the two of them they could do the starts and finishes in Catalan along with the French speakers of the Tour (Michel Gelize and Marc Chavet at the starts and Damien Martin at the finish). “I proposed myself to do the starts, I feel more comfortable with it,” adds Vidal. In the meeting with ASO, some aspects were clarified that are done differently in the French race compared to the Volta at the team presentation. “At the start, they put on a big show with the team presentation and give great importance to protocol matters. They also prefer us to interview the cyclists at the signing-in area rather than to gloss over their palmarès”.

Cold drinks, forbidden

The nerves before such a major sporting event are there and they need to be soothed “with Bach Flowers and relaxation techniques, because it is a great responsibility, a privilege, an honor, because the Tour is the great reference in world cycling,” explains Vidal. You also have to take care of your voice, trying to “avoid very cold drinks and ice cubes: during a Catalan Week I lost my voice because I strained it a lot,” he recalls. Jordi Vidal has been working as a book translator since 1985 and in addition to the men's Volta Ciclista a Catalunya (where he went for the first time with his father at fifteen) he is also the commentator for the women's Volta, the Clàssica Terres de l’Ebre and over the years he has provided commentary for the Setmana Catalana, the Cinturó de Mallorca and the Barcelona–Montpeller, and he was the commentator for the cycling events at the Barcelona 92 Games.

Screenplay

Sergi Valdivieso (Barcelona, 1955) will be the Catalan commentator for the French tour on Saturday and Sunday. Throughout his professional career at RNE, he covered the Vuelta a Espanya twenty times, the Giro d'Italia five times, and the Tour de France once. He also took charge of various world championships and about twenty Catalan Tours and Catalan Weeks, among many other races. He also worked as a Catalan commentator when the Tour arrived in Girona, Barcelona, and Andorra in 2009. “It was a very interesting experience,” Valdivieso explains to ARA. In the car Valdivieso was traveling in towards Girona were, among others, Federico Martín Bahamontes, the first Spaniard to win the Tour de France, who was celebrating his eightieth birthday and received a tribute from the French tour before the start in Girona. Valdivieso recalls that Bahamontes was “a great Barcelonista”. Surely few people remember that his first opportunities as a cyclist were given to him by the Penya Ciclista Solera de Barcelona, and since then, when he wore a blazer, he always wore his gold and diamond Barça crest,” Valdivieso recalls with a smile.

To prepare for the Tour's arrivals in Barcelona, Valdivieso likes to provide data about the route the cyclists will take in Catalonia, such as Pérez Francés's heroic victory in the 1965 Tour, when he passed in front of his house before winning in Montjuïc. And he will also illustrate us with data about the Sagrada Família, which will be one of the great moments of the 19.6-kilometer team time trial on Saturday, as all the teams will pass in front of Gaudí's temple on Carrer Mallorca. “Right now, for this year's Tour arrivals, we have a practically cinematic script, we'll see how it turns out,” adds Valdivieso.