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 be familiar, as he is the announcer for the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya which the Dane won this year with a victory in the general classification and two stage wins. Vingegaard has heard his name every day in the Volta while Jordi Vidal did his job as announcer in front of professional cyclists and the public at the side of the course during the seven Catalan stages. The Volta a Catalunya has a lot to do with Vidal acting as Catalan announcer at the three Tour de France starts in Barcelona, Tarragona, and Granollers this year, thanks to the directions of Rubèn Peris, general director of the Volta. "Friend Peris recommended me to the Tour during my first year as announcer for the Volta in 2016 to be the Catalan announcer for the arrival and departure of stages in Andorra," Vidal explains to ARA.

Since then, when 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 makes sure that there is a presence of the local language when the Grande Boucle leaves 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 Ciclista a Catalunya in Vila-seca, a representative of ASO met with him and with journalist Sergi Valdivieso, specialized in cycling since 1977 at RNE, so that between the two they would do the starts and finishes in Catalan together with the French speakers of the Tour (Michel Gelize and Marc Chavet at the starts and Damien Martin at the finish). “I volunteered to do the starts, I feel more comfortable,” adds Vidal. In the meeting with ASO, some aspects were clarified that are done differently in the French tour compared to the Volta in the team presentation. “At the start, they put on a great show with the team presentation and give great importance to protocol matters. They also prefer us to interview the cyclists at the signing control rather than glossing over their palmarès”.

Cold drinks, forbidden

The nerves before such a major sporting event are there and they must be soothed “with Bach Flowers and relaxation techniques because it is a great responsibility, a privilege, an honor because the Tour is the great benchmark of world cycling,” explains Vidal. You also have to take care of your voice by trying to “avoid very cold drinks and ice cubes. At Setmana Catalana 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 years old) he is also the commentator for the women's Volta, Clàssica Terres de l’Ebre, and over the years he has lent his voice to Setmana Catalana, Cinturó de Mallorca, Barcelona–Montpeller, and was the commentator for the cycling events at the Barcelona 92 Olympic 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 España twenty times, the Giro d'Italia five times, and the Tour de France once. He has also covered several world championships and about twenty Tours of Catalonia and Setmana Catalana among many other races. He also acted as the Catalan commentator when the Tour arrived in Girona, Barcelona, and Andorra in 2009. "It was a very interesting experience," Valdivieso tells 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 Girona start. 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 from then on, whenever he wore a blazer, he always displayed his gold and diamond FC Barcelona crest," Valdivieso recalls with a smile.

To prepare for the Tour 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 highlights of Saturday's 19.6-kilometer team time trial, as all the teams will pass in front of Gaudí's temple on Mallorca street. "Right now, for this year's Tour arrivals, we have a practically cinematic script, we'll see how it turns out," adds Valdivieso.