Many years ago now I worked for energy drink bigwigs Red Bull in New Zealand, and was thrown into a world I hitherto hardly new existed. I was hired as a copywriter and journalist, interviewing some of the brand’s brightest ambassadors about their work and then firing off pieces to various magazines. To say it was a fun job would be putting it mildly, and it also exposed me to a family of people who really do go harder before they go home.
These are the people we call “extreme” athletes, and others who just like to pursue their hobbies to the nth degree regardless of the consequences. The two documentaries I was given to talk about this week are full of people who do just that, and from various walks of life.
Many years ago now I worked for energy drink bigwigs Red Bull in New Zealand, and was thrown into a world I hitherto hardly new existed. I was hired as a copywriter and journalist, interviewing some of the brand’s brightest ambassadors about their work and then firing off pieces to various magazines. To say it was a fun job would be putting it mildly, and it also exposed me to a family of people who really do go harder before they go home.
These are the people we call “extreme” athletes, and others who just like to pursue their hobbies to the nth degree regardless of the consequences. The two documentaries I was given to talk about this week are full of people who do just that, and from various walks of life.
The first is Thursday night’s doco, DESERT RUNNERS It centres around running organization RacingThePlanet, who hosts four epically long, multiple day races throughout the year that take place in the harshest deserts in the world: The Aticama, the Gobi, the Sahara, and Antarctica. The documentary director, Jennifer Steinman follows four of the runners taking part as they try for the grand slam, competing in every race in a single year when one is more than enough to take its toll on any human body. And then some.
Seriously: imagine you’ve been dropped off in the middle of one of the largest, driest deserts in the world. Over the next six days you will have to run, jog, walk or crawl 155 miles through the incessant heat (up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit), across soft sand and hard-packed gravel, over sand dunes multiple stories high and down razor-sharp rocky cliffs. You must do this carrying everything you need to survive - like clothes, food, sunscreen, emergency medical supplies, sleeping bag - in a 20-pound pack on your back. Fun? Not my idea! Now imagine doing this not just once, but four times in one calendar year.
The race organisers have strategically chosen the aforementioned four deserts because they are (respectively) the driest, windiest, hottest and coldest places on Earth. And the courageous – or perhaps, mad - men and women who come from all over the world to compete in these Herculean events are not professional athletes at all, they’re ordinary people. They are people like you and me who have decided, for a variety of personal reasons, to take on this extreme physical challenge, which in my view is utter madness. The four participants that Steinman follows are: 56-year-old David O’Brien, an Irish marketing director, 33-year-old Ricky Paugh, a former pro American baseball player, 25 year old Aussie actress Samantha Gash who is looking to be the youngest runner to complete the Slam, and 40-year-old English ex-military security specialist Tremaine Kent, a single dad who’s taken on the races as “part of my grieving process,” his wife having died of cancer within the last year. The film is as traumatic, triumphant and emotional as you’d expect, and well worth a watch.
I have to admit, out of the two films I was given for this week ROAD stood out as the one I was least likely to want to see. A motorcycling documentary narrated by Liam Neeson? Hmmmm. But how wrong I was. It is the absolutely gripping story of Joey and Robert,William and Michael Dunlop, two sets of competing brothers in a post-1970s Northern Irish motorcycling dynasty so triumph-rich and tragedy-rich, that it should have been the basis for a Shakespearean play. Dermot Lavery and Michael Hewitt, the co-filmmakers, just had to steer the beast really, as the tale careens off at an amazing speeds with its own share of speed bumps. There is more than enough victory, tragedy, death and denial, as well as complex relationships and rivalries aplenty.
Motorcycle road racing is the most dangerous of all motor sports - think speeds of up to 200 miles per hour on closed country roads - and Ireland and the Isle of Man are two of the few places in the world where the sport still survives. Neeson tells the Dunlops’ dramatic and poignant story thetwo sets brothers take to the roads, and you along with them.