The Long Sprint: Diary of an Olympic Athlete
INNOVATION:
Developing Something Different – Independently
The Long Sprint: Diary of an Olympic Athlete (1975-76)
David Jenkins was already a multi medal champion, winning gold in both the Commonwealth and European Games. Going into Olympic Year he was the worlds No1 over 400 meters – The Long Sprint. His coach David Hemery (MBE) had already won Gold in the 1968 Mexico Olympics (400 meter hurdles).
Our self-funded film, made over two years, explores the intimate relationship between athlete and coach as they prepare to compete in the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games.
This was to be a film that would revolutionize the making of Sports Documentaries. Pelicula was forging new ground, challenging the big broadcasters’ autocracy, with a new and different kind of ‘in-depth’ sports film. The BBC started to make this type of sports documentary almost 50 years later with their excellent award-winning stories about Marcus Rashford and Rob Burrow which were called ‘Authored’ Documentaries.
The idea was that a non-intrusive, in-depth approach to filming sports men and women would, not only achieve better understanding of their sport for the viewer but would also enable a more intimate camera to reveal maximum effort. To achieve this, we would have to spend a lot more time getting to know the athlete personally, always turning up with the same crew and gradually earning their trust, respect and confidence.
An Olympic athlete is a high-performance individual and it’s essential to familiarize them with the same camera and crew. At this time elite athletes were used to television staffers turning up, but only when they were newsworthy and then being asked to perform like seals. The commentary would be spoken by a disembodied voice, again removing the viewer even further from reality.
So, our film would have no commentary, only the athlete’s words, spoken either in (voice over) or (directly to camera) telling us about their lifestyle, motivation and commitment.
The challenge for us was to shift the emphasis from a television-led situation, to an athlete-led situation, whereby the athlete described the reality of his/her own situation directly to the TV audience, making it more personal, informative and entertaining.
At this time I was also filming for the ever expanding airline British Caledonian Airways(B-CAL) and my agreement with them to fly me and my crew anywhere in the World, came in handy when David and David decided to train on the Campus at the University of California, Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.)
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I was also filming for Occidental Oil who were about to discover one of the biggest oil fields in the North Sea, Piper Alpha. Meanwhile Mike continued to hone his writing skills.
My work for B-CAL and Occidental Oil provided the funding which Mike and I (Pelicula Films) decided to commit to ‘The Long Sprint.’
As usual the established broadcasters refused to support our idea so we were always operating alone, without any financial or facilities support. So this would introduce some very scary moments.
I was stuck in the Liberian office of B-Cal waiting for them to confirm my flight to Montreal. Naturally at Olympic Games time all flights were full; however, they found me a seat on a flight to Toronto in the cockpit, behind the pilot. I’d sat there on several occasions during my filming assignments for the airline, so I was quite happy.
For me to operate freely within the airline, B-Cal had made me a senior member of staff with high priority. This seemed funny at the time, but it was incredibly helpful and as the plane landed, I thought all my worries were over.
I was going out early to join Mike and film the build-up to the games before the rest of the crew arrived. But I became enmeshed in yet another crisis which threatened to demolish our whole independent operation.
Because of my relationship with British Caledonian, I always carried a list of my camera equipment on their Letterhead, saving time and money when we entered another country and this method was accepted by the customs worldwide. However, because of the Games heightened security, Toronto customs refused to accept my documents and impounded all my camera equipment. And I needed to film the next day.
They weren’t unfriendly, but they were very firm and told me the best thing they could do was put the equipment, ‘In Bond to Air Canada’ and fly it to Montreal, where I could continue my pleading with the Montreal customs. They then proceeded to wrap all my camera cases in bright red sticky tape with yellow lettering.
So, I boarded a domestic Air Canada flight and as I stood waiting forlornly at the carousel in Montreal to collect my personal luggage, to my surprise all my camera equipment came off the same flight and because it was a domestic flight there were no custom offices present. The other passengers were astonished when they saw this rather bedraggled individual ripping all the official looking red tape off the cases and putting them on a trolley. There was so much sticky tape that it was still dangling out of my pockets as I left the airport, expecting the shouts of Canadian customs to echo through the departure area.
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However, Mike had come to meet me and we bundled all the cases into the car and made our getaway into the city, the bright red tape with the yellow lettering on it still saying, ‘In Bond to Air Canada’ trailing behind us.
David Jenkins came 7th. in the 400 meter final, but amazingly our self-funded Film, ‘The Long Sprint’ about a loser, came first in the 2nd. British International Sports Film Festival, so Jenkins was able to claim Gold after all. This also confirmed the success of our method of making in-depth Sport’s Documentaries.
‘No Easy Way’ our next Olympic Games film about Allan Wells winning gold and silver at the 1980 Moscow Games, despite Maggie Thatcher’s attempt to boycott them and Brezhnev’s secret police attempt to put us in the Lubyanka. I will give a full account of this challenge in my next blog.
My book, ‘Shaping the Shadows: A Picture Maker’s Story’ is also for sale on- line at The National Library of Scotland and on Amazon.
http;//shop.nls.uk/shaping-the-shadows-2798-p.
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