I can't believe I exited before posting yesterday, mainly in response to Echoes and the "disgrace" label...
1. Up until Armstrong, the very few English speaking riders in the peloton came through European teams, thus they spoke at least one European language. For example Greg LeMond, whose accent conquered France. In '86, GL had half of France behind him when Hinault got greedy. Fact.
2. Up until recently, English speaking countries had no race worth racing, same was true for the entire American continent (except Duitama '95). Teams could race an entire season within their boundaries, make a few pirate raids on another GT or classic. Many races are gone, the calendar is different now...
3. Heck, Joop spoke French, Delgado too, Roche of course. The journos didn't feel the need (or at least the networks) to be multi-lingual. JP Ollivier spoke Italian, that was it. A couple of years ago, one infamous Thierry Adam couldn't translate a Sagan interview, made up the whole thing up. Disgrace yes, but that's incompetence, not bias, not xenophobia.
4. Small countries have long promoted the study of foreign languages. I have met Danes or Dutch folks speaking English flawlessly, without an accent betraying their origin. From countries that I would call Empires, that is not the case. Riders are not exposed to the need to be multi-lingual, they kind of want things to come their way. Armstrong, Wiggins, Froome...but also Pinot and Bardet, 99% of the Spanish speaking riders.
5. Personality comes across with communication, language can be an obstacle, and in some cases a blessing. LeMond...great communicator. But sometimes it's not an interview, just a clip, Alberto Tomba throwing a trophy at a critical journo. Sagan pinching a podium girl's butt (bad), doing wheelies and stunts.
Moscon/Bouhani or Nikki the AHoles are characters. Is that all?
Riders are learning about managing their brand. And in that respect, cycling is behind other sports in terms of PR. And it's a different sport. No disrespect to Federer, but in my book he never dug as deep for a win as much as any GT or monument winners in cycling. These athletes are the toughests of the toughests. As you gasp for air on a MTF, they will plant a dagger in your lungs with an attack. You get rattled on the cobbles, they put the hammer down and drop you.
So it's all about what we know, what they show, what we like. Or don't like, if we talk about personalities. Larger than life, larger than the sport. Sorry, we have no LeBron. Just some dull robots, a few aforementioned bad guys, and in my view some that either need to let us know who they are or have showed it and I like them: Roglic, Mas, Bernal, and the Tibo-Squalo, Dumoulin I don't know (vocal, it's good), Remco obviously.