John Eustice

John Eustice is a nice enough fella I suppose. He's helped promote bicycle racing, he's been around a while, and he has some decent concepts and ideas.

But as a bicycle race announce....no let's broaden that considerably...as a sports announcer in general, he's totally unbearable. He's really the worst ever.

Here are a few of the foundations of any Eustice announced event.

The Italian

Regardless of the circumstances, John has to let the audience know that he can speak Italian. At first this was not that obvious as the first few winners of the Philadelphia race happened to be Italian. But over the years, John has had to go further and further down the results in order to find someone to showcase his bi-lingual skils. Hey John, we get it...bueno...or belisimo...or whatever. When you're interviewing the mechanic of the team who's Dutch rider got third in order to slip in a couple of words...maybe it's time to let it go. Save the showboating for ordering Linguini at dinner.


The Misidentification

This was epitomized perfectly in last Sunday's race when John spent 3 minutes butchering an explaination of the sport of cyclo-cross in honor of a rider that he identified as " cyclo-cross star Tim Johnson of the HealthNet team".

When he finally took a breath someone must have clued him in and he politely reidentified the rider as Amber someone or other who was on a solo break in the woman's race.

My first thought was, " what tipped you off John ? Was it the distinctly different colored jersey or the fact that Tim Johnson doesn't have a giant pair of tits ?"

The numbers

The numbers....ohhhhh the numbers. Eustice spews out numbers like a retarded Rainman. If one number is good enough for John then five numbers has to be better.

" T-mobile has 3-4-6, up to 7 riders at the front of the field."

He's like a bingo caller.

" The field is reaching speed of 20-22-24-30.....34 miles per hour and when your going 20 to 24 and up to 30 or 32 miles per hour, that's tiring"

B-13...O-64....BINGO !

The comparrisons

Cycling is like poker....cycling is like baseball...cycling is like cooking...cycling is like boxing.....and it goes on and on and on....

And while that, in and of itself, doesn't seem all that bad, consider the fact that in none of those instances does he ever make the analogy stick. For instance,

" Cycling is like football.....like football on a field that 800 yards....with 8-10-12 teams...all fighting and pushing...and that's why Lance Armstrong struggled as a young cyclist"

A football game with 10 teams ? And 800 yards ? Seriously...WTF are you talking about ? And as for Armstrong, the guy won a tour stage, the tripple crown, and the world championships all when he was barely old enough to drink the champaign. Fuck, according to this anology Armstong should be coaching the Eagles.

And finally the coup de gras

The final call

As a set-up to this point I should mention that an overriding principal to any Eustice announcement is that fact that his volume and inflection does not alway coincide with what's happening. Sometimes he emphasize a WORD in a sentence THAT HAS no significant to what HE'S trying to ephasize...while other times he just gets all excited and draws your attention to something that's really mundane..." LOOK AT THAT RIGHT THERE..HE'S SHIFTING !!!!"

Much of the above comes togeather at the greatest of all Eustice moments...the final call. As the riders charge toward the finish John works himself into a frenzy like an epileptic dog who's been slapped with a bloody steak. Some time around 300 meters to go he just starts screaming semi-coherantly at the top of his lungs. Typically he'll pick a rider or a team, I should add regardless of whether or not their in the race at the time, and just go with it.

" AND HERE THEY COME DOWN THE STRETCH AND IT'S TEUTENBURG LEADING THE SPRINT....TEUTENBURG...TEUTENBURG..TEEEEUUUUTEEEENNNNBBBBUUUUURRTGGGGG......TEUETUENEUTHDSIEGNEITHVATGIANWTGIIBBBBUUURRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG...............and Sara Uhl wins....with McRae in second and Thompson in third."