Phil Anderson was born in London but moved to Melbourne, Australia, when he was young. He grew up in the suburb of Kew and graduated from Trinity Grammar School in 1975. He first raced with Hawthorn Cycling Club, where Allan Peiper, another future professional, was also a member. Peiper said: "Phil went to a private school and joined the club with his mate, Peter Darbyshire. My best friend was Tom Sawyer, later a six-day racer in Europe, and we were the two rough nuts, while Phil and Darbs were the two upper-class boys".
Amateur career
Anderson won the 1977 Dulux Tour of the North Island in New Zealand and the Australian team time-trial championship at Brisbane in 1978. In that year he also won the Commonwealth Games road race in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He was 19. He moved to France in 1979 to join the ACBB, a club at Boulogne-Billancourt in the suburbs of Paris with a reputation of placing riders in professional teams, particularly Peugeot. Whilst he was with the ACBB he lived and raced alongside Robert Millar and Mark Bell. That season he won the Tour de l'Essonne, the Tour de l'Hérault and the amateur version of the unofficial world time-trial championship, the Grand Prix des Nations, in Cannes.
Professional career
Anderson turned professional in 1980, for Peugeot, one of the oldest French teams. He won two races in his first season - the Prix de Wetteren and a stage in the Étoile des Espoirs, and came second in two others. He moved to Lokeren, Belgium, to ride criteriums. He came fifth in the 1982 Tour de France, in which he held the white jersey of best young rider, and again fifth in 1985, the year he won the Tour de Suisse. That same season he finished second in the Super Prestige Pernod International, forerunner of the UCI points championship. His highlights were wearing the yellow jersey of the 1981 Tour de France and then again for nine days of 1982. He was the first rider from outside Europe to lead the race. Anderson described what it meant in 1981: His best year was 1985, when he won the Tour Méditerranéen, Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and the Tour de Suisse, as well as finishing second in the Tour of Flanders and Gent–Wevelgem. He continued to ride the Tour until 1989, when he came 38th, but by then he had arthritis. In 1990 he joined the American team, - "Speculation has it that he took a big pay cut; maybe that is what turned into motivation which resulted in his comeback to the big league," said Peiper - and he won the Tour Méditerranéen and the Tour of Sicily and stages of the Tour de Suisse and Tour de France. He also won the Tour of Britain in 1991 and 1993.
Anderson has married twice, first to Anne, whom he married just after turning professional, and then Christi Valentine, who in 1999 wrote Anderson's biography, Phil Anderson: Cycling Legend. Anderson and Valentine married on 29 April 1994 and separated in 2005. Anderson has been in a relationship with Anne Newell since 2006.
