The Racer

The crack of the starter pistol. The roars of the crowd. The buzz of the peloton. The burn in your thighs reminding you you're alive. The scenery. The comradeship. The lead. The relief of the finish. The adoring fans. The joy of pulling on that well earned coloured jersey. The bone weary tiredness. The brutal physio. The ice baths. The same boring food day after day. The irregular heartbeat. The blood. The needles. The misery of being an elite athlete. The Racer shows us the ecstasy of sport but never shies away from the agonies either.

It's July 1998. The year the Tour De France did things a little differently. Starting in Merrion square in Dublin the first 3 stages were held in Ireland before the race moved back home. It was a move designed to revitalise the race and help people forget they were watching a sport riddled with corruption and performance enhancing substances. Team Austrange is a favourite in this years race and the star cyclist is Lupo “Tartare” Marino (Matteo Simoni). He's the man who gets all the headlines but the real star is Dominique Chabol (Louis Talpe), a Domestique rider who's main mission in life is to get the star over the line in first place. Dom's a team player but he's questioning his place in life and at 39 he's starting to get worried about the future. In his own words "Without my bike I'm nobody." Oh and there's also the little matter of the illegal performance drugs wreaking havoc on his system.

The Racer's a compelling and convincing character study of a man who's devoted his all to an arena that in the end will chew him up and spit him out. Cycling's not the most cinematic of sports but director Kieron J. Walsh makes it work, packing the film with drama, conflict, a good Boyzone joke, some genuinely exciting racing sequences, lovely Irish scenery and a surprising amount of humour. When you lump a load of men together without women to temper them things can get rather juvenile and The Racer gleans a couple of comedic moments from their antics but most of the film's fun comes from Dom's relationship with the team doctor/physio/doper Sonny (Iain Glen). They've been working together for years, have a shorthand with each other, a relationship that feels genuine. Their friendship gives the film a warmth but also one of it's main sources of tension. Sonny's been loading Dom up with EPO for years and now it's biting back. The drugs he's taking to improve his body are wrecking it and Sonny's happy to keep going. In the world of BIG SPORT only one thing matters and it ain't the people playing.

It's these health issues that bring Lynn Brennan (Tara Lee) into Dom's orbit. She's a young Irish doctor brought in on the quiet so Sonny and Dom can keep his health problems a secret and of course there's a chemistry between the two. Lee's an interesting actress, a luminous presence onscreen but A Date For Mad Mary aside she's been mostly wasted in her film roles. Here she gets plenty to do as a professional who's conflicted by what's she's encountering in the underbelly of the world's most famous race. For Dom, it's an encounter that reminds him of what he's missing out on, that life doesn't have to be a constant struggle. Talpe sells Dom's internal discord well. He's flawed, he's selfish and he knows it and still we want him to be ok. 

Then we get to the end and a choice that many will feel has undermined everything that came before but it's a perfect encapsulation of the mindset of professionals. Nothing else but the job at hand matters. Give your all to something that doesn't give a damn about you. The film admirably doesn't condemn or commend though, that's left up to you.

The Racer is streaming online at the Cork International Film Festival website now. Fingers crossed it gets a proper cinema release soon. It deserves one.