Movie Time

Watching movies is one way to pass the interminable hours we spend riding our CompuTrainers indoors during the crappy winter weather. NetFlix has been the answer to relieving our boredom for two or three years. It carries multi-disc compilations of about the last 8 years of the Tour de France, a couple Giro d'Italias, and some other random cycling movies.

Our favorite movies, though, are not yet available on NetFlix. They are two movies produced by Gripped Films.

The first movie is "24 Hours Solo" about Chris Eatough's effort to win his seventh consecutive 24 Hour Solo championship. [I just looked at the website to get the link and the home page says"The perfect motivation for long, dark winter months (and endless hours on the trainer.)" Amen to that!]

The second film is "Off Road to Athens" about athletes trying to make the 2004 Olympic mountain bike team. The US only had 3 slots - 2 for the men and 1 for the women.

There are a number of trailers and extra scenes on the website, so check it out if you have time. The DVDs are available from VeloGear.com. Or, we'll loan our copies to you anytime between May and August!

One reason I bring this up is that just this week there was finally a judgment in a lawsuit stemming from USA Cycling's selection process for the 2004 team. If I hadn't seen Off Road to Athens to understand the background, I would have been outraged by the award. Having seen the film, the award just makes me sad. How do you put a dollar value on someone's lifetime dream of being an Olympian?

Anyway, I'm now looking forward to renting Wall-E, which looks like another great movie to watch while sweating on the trainer. Sigh.