Winter Sports Blogathon – Downhill Racer (1969)

This is part of the Winter Sports Blogathon being run over at LMDC

Tnx for letting me participate!

“Well hopefully we will get in better shape in the first three races and then go on to take the Olympics. That’s my plan, at least.” – Claire

Number of Times Seen – 1 (1 Dec 2015)

Brief Synopsis – A skier joins the US Olympic team and clashes with his coach as to what is the best way to train to win.

My Take on it –This is a movie that I had never heard of until I saw it being used as a banner for this blogathon.

I figured that you can’t go wrong with a movie featuring Robert Redford and Gene Hackman.

Boy was I wrong….

I found this really hard to get through because it moved so slowly and was pretty boring in a lot of the scenes.

What they did get right tho, were the skiing shots; they really filmed them extremely well and some were quite breath-taking.

Unfortunately, the story felt way too generic and was filled with so many sports movie cliches that I just couldn’t get into it.

The story itself is very generic; a hotshot athlete wants to prove to everyone that he is the best and he doesn’t need help from anyone but himself.

The coach doesn’t like him and tries to make life (and winning) a more difficult goal to achieve.

The girl who the athlete falls for, but neither really understand why.

I found the poster for the movie to be really cool.

There are so many better sports movies out there!

Bottom Line – Pretty boring run of the mill sports story that has some spectacular skiing footage. Typical egocentric main character, difficult coach and the girl who sorta loves the lead character. So many better sports movies out there. Has a great poster though.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The movie’s poster was listed as #4 of “The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever” by Premiere.  (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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