MQFF NOTES: Back On Board: Greg Louganis (2014, Dir. Cheryl Furjanic)

Athlete stories translate well to the big screen. And the small screen. Or, as in this case, the small screen blown up to the big screen. There is something inherently dramatic in the battle for peak performance, the in-built competition and the personal demons that have to be trumped to reach one's full potential. Greg Louganis' struggle to become the best diver in the world (a title he still holds) has all that and then some.

Cheryl Furjanic's feature length doco on Louganis' rise and fall and re-rise is a by-the-numbers sports doco lifted by the redemptive story it documents. Louganis, who at the start of the film packing his house in preparation for foreclosure and bankruptcy, has been hard done by by the sporting world that he gave his live over to. He didn't see the spoils of his talent and never walked away the lucrative endorsements that should have come from such stratospheric success. Homophobia, it seems, triumphed in the end.

With Louganis providing all-in access to Furjanic, her treatment of the fallout of his well-documented coming out as an HIV+ gay man is both informative and angering. Even more tragic is Furjanic's depiction of the sports afterlife, what happens to athletes who have given their all to physical perfection (and the constant archival footage well and truly prove how well Louganis achieved this) at the expense of education and social development. The ease with which Louganis is repeatedly taken advantage of is shocking and should provide a wake up call to sports institutions who appear to have readily sidestepped their responsibility in Louganis' case. We'll name check homophobia once more.

More encouraging moments come in the recent advances in both Louganis' social standing and USA Diving's attempts at professional restitution. Both leave Back on Board with a satisfying sense of advancement.

It may be well overdue but this is a tribute that does well to express Louganis' exceptional talent and courage. And now he can watch it while he's eating from his soon to be released Wheaties box.

The world is catching up.

★★★

Trailer:

Back On Board: Greg Louganis screened as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.