Chasing Legends

[Dan_K]

[url]http://www.chasinglegends.com/index.html[/url]

Last night I went to Covent Garden Odeon to watch this film. It’s absolutely brilliant and so inspiring.

It basically outlines the Tour de France as an event but focuses on the HTC Columbia team during the 2009 tour, following the team and using them to explain the tour. The film balance is enough that it’s entertaining for someone who knows nothing about cycling but doesn’t make it boring for an avid fan either.

The camera work is brilliant and gives a great perspective of what goes on in a race. You get some on board rider shots, photographer shots and then loads of footage from the team cars, all shot in high definition, so to see some of the panoramic shots are really breathtaking.

There are some good comedy moments too. Rolf Aldag and Brian Holm are like a double act and have some funny exchanges in the team car. Jens Voigt is his usual charismatic self as well.

Even though we all knew the outcome of the race, the final sprint in Paris was truly gripping! I think if the cinema had set up a couple of turbo trainers, they’d have been a fight to use them.

The film touched on the rivalry between Garmin and Columbia and featured George Hincapie talking about missing the yellow jersey by a few seconds. You really feel for him and can see why he was so determined to break the Garmin line in Paris and set up Renshaw to lead out Cav.

I would have liked to have seen more in depth interviews during the tour to get the riders actual feelings at the time. A great deal of the interviews were retrospective but I guess the team are busy enough with media during the tour. This didn’t detract from the film at all.

After the film, there was a Q&A session shot at the O2 cinema and then beamed to all the other UK cinemas. This was with Phil Liggett, Mark Cavendish, Rolf Aldag, Brian Holm and the film’s director. I’d say it was ok but you wouldn’t be upset to miss it as it was more a congratulatory on the film rather than tough journalistic questioning.

All in all, it was great to see cycling on the big screen and it’s definitely one I’ll buy on DVD. Highly recommended!

[Del]

Saw this last night at Crawley.

Nothing much to add to the excellent summary from Dan.

The sound didn't work at Crawley when we went over to the O2 Q&A session, so the audience sat through aroud 5 minutes of Phil Liggett miming, before we all got up and walked out.

Still, we all got 2 free tickets as compensation.