Superbodies shows Olympic science
Read this article at CTVOlympics.caA skier walks away from an alpine race after suffering a potentially crippling wipeout. A biathlete sprints on cross-country skis and suddenly drops to fire a rifle with precision. A snowboarder executes extreme twists and torsion upside down in midair.
We've all admired what an athlete can do, from the outside. Now imagine seeing what goes on inside an elite body at work as it unleashes a quadruple jump on the ice, pilots a sled against crushing G-force pressure, explodes from behind the net only to spin, stop and score a goal in the blink of an eye.
A revealing look at the forensic science of sports is what Canada's Olympic broadcast media consortium had in mind when it set about producing an ambitious 12-part series of vignettes called Superbodies.
"People love the CSI approach to storytelling," said Don Young, executive producer of documentary features for the consortium, referring to the wildly popular television franchise Crime Scene Investigation.
"We were looking for provocative ways to tell a story, and we thought, what about looking at the inside of the body of Olympic athletes during competition and what goes on? CSI is exactly where the idea comes from. It's an immensely popular show and for good reason."
A dozen two-minute vignettes were produced - in English and French - using costly and eye-popping computer-generated imagery (CGI). The consortium hired Greg Wells, a physiological scientist who works with elite athletes and kids suffering with chronic diseases at Toronto General Hospital and the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, to narrate and help research the pieces.
Each vignette presents a sport, its physical limit and the effects on the body. You see the beating moguls skiing takes on knees and hips; how aerial skiers control spatial awareness; how long-track speed skaters relax their muscles and mind during competition; how immense psychological pressure on the men's hockey team plays out in the body.
It plays like an athletic autopsy - an unusual view using advanced technology that Young hopes will push storytelling and explanatory broadcast journalism to an unprecedented level. Wells hopes Superbodies educates viewers, pushing them to support amateur athletes and get off the couch themselves.
"The cool thing about CGI is we can make the anatomy real," Wells said. "It allows us to see what these athletes go through, how their bodies function to put them right on the edge of control, where they need to be to be successful.
"The Winter Olympics are the Games of snow and ice. They go faster than you'd ever think in downhill skiing and the sliding sports. Speed skating is the fastest human-powered sport and most stressful. Biathlon takes the body to the absolute extreme of what's possible in terms of heart rate up and down.
"If you look at the human body from the outside it's amazing, but if you look at it from the inside it's absolutely mind-blowing."
Young, whose 30-year career has been spent largely in current affairs and production, wanted to bring a new perspective to the Games feature coverage by combining technology, a documentary style and emotional, old-school storytelling.
"I'm a sports fan like anybody else, but I'm not a TSN guy," he said. "I worked on the Barbara Frum show. Really, I'm an outsider who is looking for provocative ways to tell a story using all the technology that's available to us. So much more is possible than even two years ago.
"We're able to achieve a richness of sound and pictures we've never known. The cameras are smaller so we can get them into places we traditionally couldn't, which gives us better access. There's a real intimacy in the storytelling. I've tried very hard not to tell stories about statistics and numbers and how many podiums they've had, but to bring the human drama to it."
As executive producer Young is behind more than 300 features that will be shown over the 17 days of the Games. In addition to Superbodies, other highlights include mini-documentaries featuring athletes in their own words. Among others, speed skater Jeremy Wotherspoon speaks on failure, figure skater Patrick Chan on respect, and ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir on young love.
Another series asks the question: How tough are these sports? Formula One racer Jacques Villeneuve gets on the skeleton with Jon Montgomery; hockey tough guy Georges Laraque puts on short-track skates and, as Young said with a chuckle, "gets his ass kicked."
On Home Ice follows Steve Yzerman on an eight-month journey assembling the men's hockey team. Unprecedented behind-the-scenes access culminates on the final night before the roster is named as the executive director and his staff decide on the final positions.
Young's dearest project - The Great Tournament - follows a father and his 12-year-old son from their farm in Alberta to Vancouver as they talk to hockey fans about what the game means to Canadians.
Their story is interwoven with the stories of superstars such as Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin as they also make their way to the tournament.
Whether it's the forensics of sport shown in Superbodies with the help of computer-generated imagery, or Yzerman's contemplation of the final men's roster spots in On Home Ice, the approach, Young said, is the same.
"At the end of the day it comes back to finding the story - people with compelling dramas and then getting the access with help from the technology," he said. "That's what really serves the broader audience."
Greg D. Wells, Ph.D.
Reader Comments (21)
Love the series - fascinating stuff. keep it up.
Thanks George. I appreciate the comments we're getting.
Listening to you is one of my favourite parts of the Olympics. I learn so much!
Thanks Tracey - that means a lot to all of us here. Enjoy the games!
Greg
How does one access these vignettes on a computer....they sound so great.
J