Paul Sherwen, who raced in the Tour de France and then became a longtime voice of commentary on that and other major cycling events for the English-speaking world, died Sunday at his home in Kampala, Uganda. He was 62.

The cause was heart failure, his wife, Katherine Love Sherwen, said.

For 33 editions of cycling’s most famous race, starting in 1986, Paul Sherwen teamed with Phil Liggett to provide live commentary for broadcasts in English-speaking countries, including the United States. Even casual cycling fans knew who “Phil and Paul” were.

With Sherwen behind the wheel, the pair would drive to the finish line of each stage of the three-week race and squeeze into a tiny booth packed with television monitors, cameras, lights and computers inside a two-story trailer. “They are hot and stuffy, compact working quarters,” Liggett said in a telephone interview from South Africa, where he lives.

While Liggett generally called the race, particularly the final kilometer, Sherwen drew on his time as a professional racer and seven-time Tour entrant to explain cycling’s sometimes opaque tactics to viewers and otherwise fill airtime during broadcasts that, for some stages, ran on for as much as six hours.

— New York Times News Service