This 1998 Steve Prefontaine biopic, written by Prefontaine’s teammate and Sports Illustrated contributor Kenny Moore, was actually the second movie on the subject in the late ’90s.  A year and a half earlier, legendary documentary director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) had put out Prefontaine starring 90s It Boy Jared Leto in the title role.  That film, while quite good in this viewer’s eyes, was DOA at the box office.  The producers of Without Limits, including Tom Cruise, must have been sweating bullets when their movie debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Directed by award-winning screenplay writer Robert Towne (Chinatown, Shampoo, Greystoke), Without Limits entrusts Billy Crudup with the role of America’s running idol.  Crudup has been very good in things like Almost Famous and The Hi-Lo Country, but as Steve Prefontaine he’s truly horrible.  It must be tough to play someone both famously brash and famously sullen, but Crudup plays it with a bizarrely childlike affectation.  It feels like a really shallow performance, which is thankfully rescued by Donald Sutherland in the role of Oregon coach (and later Nike magnate) Bill Bowerman.  I have no idea if it’s historically accurate, but Sutherland brings his usual smarmy edge to the role… even injecting a bit of creepy gym teacher into the part.  Spread throughout the film are three exchanges, particularly one about proper pelvic positioning, between Sutherland and Crudup that seem like they are about to degenerate into sodomy right there in the middle of practice.  If screenwriter Moore hadn’t been a personal acquintance of the two main characters I wonder if Sutherland’s portrayal would have drawn objections from the running community.  Instead he received a Supporting Actor Golden Globe nomination.

The running scenes in Without Limits are both credible and inspiring, and Towne does a good job in recreating the atmosphere of a time when distance runners were American sports celebrities.  There are fun cameos by marathon legend Frank Shorter and broadcaster Charlie Jones as TV commentators.  (It’s actually a reunion for the duo, who played race announcers 16 years earlier in Towne’s track and field gem Personal Best.)  Shorter’s participation in the movie is interesting, in that the Without Limits (like the earlier Prefontaine) pretty much glosses over the alcohol aspect of Prefontaine’s driving death and centres his fateful drive around Shorter’s nagging of Prefontaine to give him an early ride home from a party.

Personally I preferred 1997’s Prefontaine, but Without Limits was the better critically and commercially received of the two and is worth a rental for sure.  It’s widely available wherever you rent or buy DVDs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wQ5SfDWm8U

Those two Saturday nights in Atlanta are forever etched in Canadian lore.

What casual observers may not have understood was that this was only a middle act in the performance that saw Canadian men elevate us to the top status of the sprint relay world.

In 1993, the Canadian 4×100 team grabbed an unexpected bronze medal at the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany on the speed of Robert Esmie, Glenroy Gilbert, Bruny Surin and Atlee Mahorn.  It was a bit of redemption for Mahorn and Surin, who had advanced Canada in the semifinals at the ’91 Championships only to be replaced on the final foursome that would finish last.  Mahorn, the anchor, had already made a name for himself with a bronze in the 200m at the previous Championships and a 200m gold way back at the ’86 Commonwealth Games.  Montreal’s Surin was on the radar screen having won 60m gold at the World Indoor Championships in the spring of that year.

The 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden was truly Canada’s moment in the sun.  In the 100m final, former Oakville stockbroker won the gold with Surin edging Ato Boldin for the silver.  In the 4x100m final the two would bookend the gold medal winning team (with Esmie and Gilbert).  That year Surin also won gold over 60m in the world Indoor Championships, and Gilbert took 100m gold at the Pan American Games in Argentina.

1996, of course, saw Bailey set a new Olympic record (9.84s) on his way to the 100m gold.  Surin and Gilbert had been disappointingly eliminated in the semis and round 2 heats respectively, but powered Canada to wins in the opening heat and semifinal along with Bailey and Carlton Chambers.  In the final, Chambers was replaced on the lead leg by the more experienced Esmie, and the rest is golden history.

The ’97 Championships in Athens saw a similar situation, with Chambers running the leadoff in the first round and then giving way to Esmie, who again joined Gilbert, Surin and Bailey atop the podium.  It’s the only time in IAAF world Championships history that the same foursome has won consecutive 4x100m gold medals.  Never happened before, hasn’t happen since.  Actually, since then no country has repeated in that event, period.  Bailey was also able to take home an individual silver in the 100m, making it three straight major international meets at which he won both personal and relay medals.  (’97 was also the year that Bailey embarrassed Michael Johnson in their 150m matchup at Skydome.)

The 1999 World Championships team fizzled in the first round, though individually Bruny Surin was able to again win silver (and tie Bailey’s 9.84s national record) in an incredible showdown with the great american Maurice Greene.

Here’s that race from the ’97 World Championships, featuring your defending World and Olympic champs.

Enjoy!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj1bS0yXr3Y&feature=related

Hey gang,

Busy day for yours truly, so today’s entry is just going to be to direct you to another great stop on the Information Superhighway.  Fooducate.com is my favourite blog for insightful commentary on food, the people who make and market it, and the bodies that regulate it.  It’s an American site, but since we share so many consumer products and our government regulatory agencies operate similarly I always find it quite relevant here in Canada.

Here’s a great page from last week, talking about ways to improve food package labelling.

I particularly agree with point #4, which has a lot to do with the fudging that goes on with point #1.

This is a fun one.  It kind of looks like a clip from an ’80s screwball comedy, where a gangly honeymooner wearing a golf cap finds himself on the Olympic track with the world’s greatest… and promptly falls into last place.

It’s also one of the most exciting final 100m sprints to gold you’ll ever see, with two men posting identical world record times.

Enjoy!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHid-nC45k

We’re coming to that time of year when the race calendar starts to thin out in many parts of the country.  There are a lot of people with plenty of acquired fitness looking for a place to apply it.  Which reminds me of some of the more creative athletic endeavours I’ve come across over the years…

Portland Urban Iditarod

The real Iditarod – the 1868km dog sled race through Alaska – has long been the subject of scorn from animal rights groups.  How would you like to be leashed together with a bunch of equally stinky creatures and forced to run around in the dead of winter?  Well, the good people of Portland, Oregon – home to more breweries than any other US city – seem inclined to find out.  Each March, on the same day as the Alaska event, they tether themselves to “sleds” (mostly shopping carts) and take off on a four mile course through the city’s downtown.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmscgAEWMCc

(I think my favourites are the boxers at 1:01)

Pump And Run

These are hybrid events combining barbell bench press and 5K footraces.  For every repetition you can lift (gender/age categories determine what percentage of your bodyweight you must lift) a certain number of seconds are deducted from your subsequent 5K time.  It’s a pretty cool test of both anaerobic power and aerobic endurance.  There used to be a Pump and Run race in Ancaster, Ontario, but it seems now that Ohio is ground zero for these events.

Wife Carrying

Wife Carrying – or “Eukonkato” as the Finnish call it or “Most Saturday Nights” as I call it – is an event in which a man carries his special lady through an obstacle course to win her weight in beer.   Several styles have been popularized, from the conventional piggyback or Fireman’s Carry to the highly specialized Estonian Carry.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PeA10_PijI&feature=player_embedded

Cheese Rolling

As you watch, try to remember that the British actually dominated the world economically and culturally for centuries.  Now they do this.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOyQBSMeIhM

UK Tough Guy

Full respect for any race that sells you disability insurance before the event.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9dep7RKVVA&feature=player_embedded

(I love the guys who list “being from Germany” as their vocation.)

Here we go with this week’s featured clip…

Everyone has seen the famous 1968 image of Olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their gloved fists in silent protest of racial and social injustice.  But have you seen the actual race?

One thing in that image that is sometimes overlooked is the fact that the silver medalist, Australian Peter Norman, is participating politically as well.  You see that circular badge on the left side of his chest?  That’s a badge for the Olympic Project for Human Rights, the (then) little-known protest group Tommie Smith and John Carlos were supporting.  Norman borrowed the badge from an American athlete on the way out to the medal ceremony.  He was heavily criticized back home for his solidarity with the two Americans, and he went on to lead a bit of a sad life, battling addictions and depression, getting gangrene, and suffering a fatal heart attack at the age of 64.  Smith and Carlos were pall bearers at his funeral.  The race you’ll see him run in this video is still – 41 years later – the Australian national record at the 200m distance.

Another interesting tidbit is that the race was more or less the end of each of these men’s high performance track career.  None would go on to medal at any other major international championship.  However, all three would experience minor professional sports careers.  Tommie Smith caught on very briefly with the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, making a single 41 yard reception.  On that play he broke his collarbone and never played again.  Peter Norman played here and there for an Aussie Rules Football Club.  John Carlos had brief stints with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and the CFL’s Argos and Alouettes.

Finally, Tommie Smith’s world record performance in this race was the first ratified 200m time under 20 seconds, and his record would go unbroken for 11 years.  John Carlos had broken the 20s barrier a month earlier, but the result was not officially recognized as a world record due to a technicality about the spike configuration of his shoes.

So here’s the race.  Enjoy!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–lzACn0aZ8&feature=related