Faster Higher Stronger - Documentary

[LiveLoveTumble]

I just watched this gymnastics documentary, Faster Higher Stronger. It is a series of documentaries about the history of sports. Here is the youtube link: Faster Higher Stronger: Stories of the Olympic Games - Gymnastics [Episode 2] [BBC Documentary] - YouTube
It is also posted on the gymnastics zone if that link doesn't work: Watch "Stories of the Olympic Games - Gymnastics"

I thought the beginning was very good, but in the last 20 minutes or so, it jumped around a lot, skipping about a decade or two. Otherwise, it was very informative. Opinions?

 

[Iheartmili]

I loved it..... But I love anything Olympic related!

 

[Faith]

I thought it focussed way too much on Nadia/Olga. I know they changed the sport, but so did a lot of others, and its a story already well covered. Davydova was practically a postscript, and most of the great 80's gymnasts weren't even mentioned. Mukhina I always thought was one of the key gymnasts that led the change into more men's skills and more acrobatic gymnastics, although I suppose that's not a great story for a pre-olympics documentary. Yurchenko too, her vault is now ubiquitous, and probably one of the few skills that crossed over from womens to mens gymnastics, rather than vice versa, and she wasn't mentioned.

I loved the latynina/cavlaska story though, I didn't know much of cavlaska's back story, with the czech politics and all. I also loved Nadia, she seems like a really balanced person. I thought the bit with the score drama was brilliant, they were basically saying politics led to the soviet winning, but she said if she hadn't made the mistake earlier in the competition the floor score wouldn't have mattered. Olga always seems bitter over the way she was treated, and I really like Nadia's attitude.

The mens bits I thought were odd. Just that big story on the knee bloke, very brave, but I would have liked a similar story to the womens, how the sport has changed and who changed it. It seemed as if they did the latynina/cavlaska/olga/nadia thing, then panicked about having 20 minutes left and how to fill it!

ETA: If anyone's interested, it's a series, they cover athletics, swimming etc in other episodes.

 

[Flossyduck]

I enjoyed watching it, but was a little disappointed. It seemed to be going along very nicely and then suddenly wrapped things up way too hurridly and it did focus too much on a couple of the well known stories.

Watching it with my daughter she was interested to see all the old footage - her comment that 'back in those old days' they did the same sort of difficulty she is doing now and if she had a time machine she could go back and win a medal!

I hoped it would go through the development of the sport in more recent times - post soviet/romanian dominance, but they really restricted that to the men (and even then only very briefly) so it didn't reflect gymnastics in the last ten or twenty years at all well.

Pleasant to watch but not much new there>

This may have been mentioned before but The Gymnast is a terrific documentary, really worth watching. It's the build up to the live selection of the GB team for Beijing, following the gymnasts and families involved as they work towards selection - very well done and moving too.

 

[Faith]

This may have been mentioned before but The Gymnast is a terrific documentary, really worth watching. It's the build up to the live selection of the GB team for Beijing, following the gymnasts and families involved as they work towards selection - very well done and moving too.

I can't bring myself to watch that, I'd just be an emotional mess and make DD give up gym rather than put her through that!!