Globe Runner blog

If there is one sport where performance enhancing drugs seem to be more prevalent than in track and field athletics, it is cycling. And for those who think that a spell in prison may prove to be the final deterrent for users of sports drugs, the French have come up with the ultimate in post-modern irony - the Tour de France Penal, ie a cycle race for prisoners. On the open road!

I thought it was a joke too. But I kid you not! Close to 200 cons/riders set out from Lille, northern France last Friday, on a 3500 kilometre jaunt, which will end in Paris in a couple of weeks’ time. Each stage starts and finishes in a town with a prison, but the inmates, accompanied by 124 guards, will become outmates, ie they will stay in hotels. Another small point (which isn’t a joke either) is they won’t be allowed to attempt a breakaway from the pack. This, apparently is against the notion of team spirit that the experiment is intended to nurture.

You couldn’t make this up, could you?

Organisers and riders are hoping that the race will have a positive effect on the prisoners, and help reintegrate them into a society for which the real Tour is an integral part of their culture. “It’s a kind of escape for us, a chance to break away from the daily reality of prison,” said a 22 year old prisoner named only as Daniel. “If we behave well, we might be able to get released earlier, on probation”. If only the riders in the real Tour were so upfront!

One of the few regrets of my career in journalism is that I never had a chance to cover the classic Tour. There was always a track meet on somewhere. But a US colleague once told me that the first time he covered the Tour, it changed his whole perspective of organised sport. “I was brought up on the World Series being the ultimate event,” he said. “But the Tour is without doubt the greatest sports event in the world. Up there with the Olympics”.

But this ‘escape’ aspect of the Tour Penal put me in mind of Jericho Mile, for my money, the best running related movie ever made. This is despite website forums regularly voting for one of the Prefontaine films.

The enduring attachment to the memory of Steve Prefontaine remains a mystery to most non-Americans, despite the two feature films and one lengthy documentary on Pre, that were released between 1995 and 1999. Earlier this century, I interviewed the eminent US film critic Andrew Sarris for a BBC Radio series, Sport in the Movies. Sarris seemed equally mystified at the celluloid idolotry of Pre, and was particularly blunt in his estimation. “American films, especially sports films are about winners. He was a loser”.

Without giving too much of Jericho Mile away, if you haven’t seen it, this first feature for now famous director, Michael Mann is about a ‘lifer’ who gets so good at running in the prison yard that the governor gives him permission to train outside the prison walls (walls - Jericho, get it?).

Now one of my biggest gripes about sports films is that any sports stars coopted into the movie cannot act, and actors equally inevitably cannot pass themselves off as sportsmen and women. Indeed, the bravura opening of Chariots of Fire - a group running along a beach at St Andrews in Scotland - is spoiled for me by a guy who is supposed to be an Olympic 1500 metres runner, hoving into view with legs so stubby, he couldn’t manage three and three quarter laps in ten minutes, let alone four. In contrast, one of the better things about Without Limits, the third of the Pre trilogy is how well the archive footage is integrated with the running actors, including Billy Crudup in the lead role.

Jericho Mile is self-contained - it was actually shot at Folsom Prison - so archive isn’t a problem. And with the world record holder at the time the film was made (1978) being New Zealander, John Walker, the barrel-chested actor Peter Strauss didn’t look such an unlikely miler.

Since it was made for TV, the film suffered from a small budget, but it has a lot going for it - good acting, a serious script, with tremendous sub-plots (rival gangs in the gaol), as well as capturing the striving of the principal character, Murphy, to give a sense to his life through running to Olympic standard. At a deeper level, it’s a revenge drama, with overtones of Greek tragedy. As such, there is no cheap, ‘glorious’ ending, although it manages to be life-affirming.

The film is small in scope, but perfectly realises its ambitions. It‘s a reminder just how good films can be, in both form and content, when there is so much trash around. And I’ll bet the French like it, because, like cycling if there’s another thing they know about, it’s how to make movies.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.