As the London 2012 Olympic Games draw ever closer, a new BBC documentary series tells the stories behind some of the extraordinary athletes who have pushed performance to the limit and beyond in pursuit of gold, over more than a 100 years of Olympic competition.
Running across four consecutive nights at 7pm on BBC Two, Faster, Higher, Stronger will give an unparalleled insight into a selection of the most memorable moments from four different Olympic disciplines.
This unique series uses state-of-the-art filming techniques as well as combining expert eyewitness testimonies, period reconstruction and rare archive footage.
Taking its title from the Olympic motto, the four-part series explores the history of the modern Games through the stories of extraordinary athletes who have pushed performance to the limit and beyond in pursuit of gold.
Faster, Higher, Stronger forms part of the BBC’s extensive season of programming in the build-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games, which begins with the opening ceremony on July 27.
Each hour-long episode will be available to view for up to seven days after transmission on the BBC iPlayer.
As well as covering and building up to all the sporting events during the Olympics itself, the BBC has staged various musical and cultural festivals in the build-up to the Games, as well as a season of programming dedicated to the city of London.
The series begins by examining how the most anticipated and hyped event in any Olympics – the 100 metres final – has been run faster and faster.
By men like Jim Hines, the first to run the race in under 10 seconds; Carl Lewis, the best finisher of them all; and Usain Bolt, whose massive stride allows him to eat up the track.
Sprinters run the 100m in distinct phases and the programme reveals what they are and how athletes – running at up to 28 miles an hour – have to master each of them to win. Britain’s Alan Wells recalls the dip at the line that won him gold in Moscow in 1972.
Combining expert eyewitness testimony, rare historic archive, period reconstruction and special filming techniques to slow down and analyse performance, this is a unique insight into the most electrifying event in all of sport.
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Episode 2 – Gymnastics Tuesday 10th July – 7pm-8pm – BBC TwoDaring and danger, skill and beauty combine as the series continues with the story of gymnastics at the modern Games.
The programme explores the never-ending pursuit of perfection by athletes who push their sport to greater and greater levels of technical difficulty, both on the floor and up on the high apparatus.
Like Olga Korbut, who transformed gymnastics with revolutionary new routines which risked everything in Munich in 1972, or Nadia Comaneci who picked up the baton and went one further by scoring the first perfect ten out of ten in an Olympics at Montreal in 1976.
Faster, Higher, Stronger is full of dramatic incident as well as great gymnastic elegance and achievement.
One of most inventive Olympic gymnasts Vera Caslavska relives the protest she made at the Soviet invasion of her country Czechoslovakia during the 1968 Mexico Games.
Plus Japanese athlete Jun Fujimoto recounts the extraordinary story of how he competed with a broken knee to ensure his team won gold.
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Episode 3 – 1500m Wednesday 11th July – 7pm-8pm – BBC TwoThe story of one of the blue-riband event of any Games – the 1500 metres, or metric mile – is the focus of the third episode of the series.
This was the race that gave Britain its finest Olympic hour in Los Angeles in 1984, when three British legends competed for gold – Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram.
Travelling to the many and varied environments that have helped shape the greatest 1500m runners – from the forests of Finland to the beaches of Australia, from the city streets and country lanes of Britain to the high altitude terrains of Kenya and Morocco – it reveals that although the race is run on a track, it is ultimately won on punishing training runs in natural landscapes.
With contributions from some of the greatest Olympians ever to run the 1500m – Kip Keino, Herb Elliot, Peter Snell, Sebastian Coe and the current world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj – the programme shows that to win 1500m gold athletes need the stamina of marathon runners, the explosive speed of the best sprinters and astute tactical brains.
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Episode 4 – Swimming Thursday 12th July – 7pm-8pm – BBC TwoThe final episode takes to the water to explore how swimmers have swum faster and faster to win gold.
From its earliest beginnings in chilly waterways open to the elements, the Olympic swimming competition has driven the development of technique in all the four strokes.
Faster, Higher, Stronger reveals how the front crawl first evolved in Australia after a Solomon Islander introduced the stroke from the rough seas of the Pacific.
How the butterfly grew out of the breaststroke but only after swimmers began swimming the older, more sedate stroke with a double over-arm action to go faster.
Combining cutting-edge filming techniques to analyse performance, period reconstruction and unique archive footage from the very earliest Olympics onwards, the programme includes interviews with great Olympic champions such as Mark Spitz, Dawn Fraser and Ian Thorpe, as well as contributions from British medal winners Sharron Davies, David Wilkie and Adrian Moorhouse.
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