I have always liked Phil and Paul, but the quality of their race calling has really dropped off this year. Sherwen repeats the exact same phrase that Liggett has just said, absolutely annoying as hell. I cannot take Paul anymore, please exit stage left.

And Phil has been making a lot of mistakes everyday. I'll pick two that were the most egregious:

1. On stage 10 up to Courecheval (sp), Phil announced that this was Lance's 22nd Stage win. Only trouble was that Vallverde (Illes-Baleres) won the stage at the line.

2. Stage 18 or 19, Alexander Vinokurov went out and grabbed four seconds at the first or second sprint. He then announced that Vino had now moved into 7th on GC ahead by one second past Levi Leipheimer. Well, Phil the time difference was Levi @7:35 behind, and Vino at 9:34. Phil is only looking at the seconds, and not the minutes.
But, throughout the broadcast, he keeps repeating this fiction. Can no one on OLN hand him a note that he has the times wrong?

There were other bloopers, and now I see why OLN brought in Al Trautwig to learn the ropes of cycling. He may not be a former racer, but Al is a professional at calling the play by play, and has seems to be able to read the text scrawl to keep his facts up to date. And Bob Roll is a complete whack job, but he at least has original thoughts, and doesn't repeat what the play by play man has just said.

"Breaking your duck is a cricketing term. You get a duck when you're dismissed without scoring any runs.

Another way of putting it would be ""off the mark""--not to be confused with ""off the wall"", which is, of course, a baseball term whose meaning is completely different. The one phrase is equally incomprehensible to Americans as the other is to Brits.

I would guess that ""Lost his bottle"" is Cockney rhyming slang, but I don't know the etymology.

I agree with Chris that the standard of commentary has deteriorated very badly in recent years."

'Lost his bottle' means lost his nerve, is no longer brave enough. ie if you crash or skid whilst descending at breakneck speed and then take the rest of the descent slower it could be said you have 'lost your bottle'. May also refer to the loss of a bottle.