Going the Distance

This is an overlong and disappointingly dry commentary on the build up by eight athletes from around the world to the XI Commonwealth Games in Edmonton. The whole premiss of these games harks back to colonial times but the thrust of this documentary doesn't really attempt to politicise that, but instead seems more intent on celebrating a diversity that allows a young girl who trains by running on a dirt track around her Kenyan village; or a gent suffering from chronic malaria whose training involves a daily jog up to an altitude of 7,00 feet, with others from more developed nations like a gymnast from Canada whose parents built a training facility so she could practise. Each of these competitors shows clearly that though opportunity undoubtedly plays a part, in the end it is about skill and ability if you really want to win the gold medal. Sadly, we don't really get up close or personal with any of them, except the engaging Kiwi (via South Africa and the UK) weightlifter Precious McKenzie who makes lifting twice his own bodyweight look as if he were lifting a pillow. There are plenty examples of the precocious and the dedicated as they travel - for some their first time on a plane - to see the Queen open the games and experience what for many will be an experience of a lifetime. Towards the conclusion we do incorporate a little more of the host broadcaster feeds from the sports, but for the most part this consists of hand held photography that doesn't always show us just how much effort these folks are making to achieve their goals and the narration is as flat as some of the tyres on the slippy road race course. It is worth a watch if you are interested in the history of amateur sport and it's televising and for those of us in the UK, it's nice to recall household name police officer Geoff Capes, whom we were more used to seeing pulling truck with his teeth than nursing his newborn chicks.