Downhill Racer

Downhill Racer
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Michael Ritchie
Produced by	Richard Gregson
Written by	James Salter
Starring	Robert Redford Gene Hackman Camilla Sparv Karl Michael Vogler Dabney Coleman
Music by	Georges Delerue
Cinematography	Brian Probyn
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	November 6, 1969
Running time	101 min.

Downhill Racer is a 1969 film and the first to be directed by Michael Ritchie. A drama about ski racing, it stars Robert Redford and Gene Hackman.

Tagline: How fast must a man go to get from where he's at?

Plot

Dave Chappelet is a self-centered, ambitious ski racer from Idaho Springs, Colorado with an outside chance of making the U.S. Olympic team.

He joins the team in mid-season in Europe, and immediately clashes with the team's head coach, Eugene Claire, as well as the more experienced teammates. The ego-driven Chappelet complains about his assigned race positions and shows little interest in team success or morale.

After a couple of strong downhill performances that make him a rising contender, a ski equipment manufacturer begins to seek Chappelet's endorsement and his assistant Carole takes a romantic interest in him, which may or may not be sincere.

Chappelet becomes the U.S. team's best hope after top downhiller Johnny Creech is injured in a pre-Olympic race. Claire doesn't like counting on Chappelet, but a great deal is at stake and Chappelet delivers the race of his life winning the gold medal at the Olympics.

Production

The assistant coach of the U.S. Ski team is played by Dabney Coleman and Swedish actress Camilla Sparv plays the love interest. Karl Michael Vogler appears as her boss, a ski company owner.

Locations

Lots of good World Cup ski racing action, leading to an exciting climax at the Winter Olympics. The winter scenes were filmed on location in the Alps, mostly in January 1969. Prominently featured are the Lauberhorn at Wengen, Switzerland, and the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbühel, Austria. Also included were Megève, France and St. Anton, Austria.

The off-season scenes were filmed at various locations in Colorado; the track scene was filmed at a relatively new Potts Field, on the east campus of CU in Boulder.

Inspiration

The suspected inspiration for the lead character in the film was a composite of Spider Sabich and Billy Kidd. Sabich, a young and attractive Californian, finished fifth in the slalom at the 1968 Olympics, at age 22. Kidd was a U.S. Ski Team veteran from Vermont who won the silver medal in the slalom at the 1964 Olympics at age 20. Those close to Sabich remember him as much more positive and easy-going than Redford's character, Dave Chappellet. While Kidd was more aloof than Sabich, he too was more light-hearted (and had a much better sense of humor) than Chappellet.

Realization

The far-fetched notion of an American winning the men's Olympic downhill would be realized fifteen years later, when brash upstart Bill Johnson predicted his victory in 1984 in Sarajevo, and then delivered, besting silver medalist Peter Müller of Switzerland by 0.27 seconds.

A decade later, a humbler Tommy Moe won on a considerably more challenging course in Lillehammer, Norway, taking Olympic gold for the USA in 1994 by a mere 0.04 seconds over the home country favorite, Kjetil André Aamodt.

External links

• Downhill Racer at the Internet Movie Database
• Sports Illustrated - "How to Succeed in Racing Without Really Racing" - 24-Nov-1969
• Roger Ebert - review of Downhill Racer - 22-Dec-1969