The 50 greatest sporting movies

In December 2005 we asked Times readers to vote for what they most liked to watch with their popcorn. Here's the countdown of your top 50 favourite sporting films in our classic series

In a classic series from The Times and Times Online, readers voted for their top 50 sports movies, producing a list containing some fantastic films - and maybe a couple of stinkers (When Saturday Comes? What were you thinking?). In all, 101 films were nominated but there were some great movies left on your cutting-room floor.

Boxing films dominate the also-rans, as they do in the winning list, with Robert Wise’s double Oscar-winning Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), starring Paul Newman, probably the best film not to gain enough votes for the top 50. Sylvester Stallone’s second (1979) and fourth (1985) instalments of the Rocky saga had supporters although nobody voted for the fifth when the franchise was clearly running out of steam (and at that time we still didn't know about the horror of the sixth).

Denzel Washington’s Oscar-nominated performance in Hurricane (1999) and The Champ (1979), a weepathon starring Jon Voight and Ricky Schroder, also had fans while Ali (2001), with Will Smith, just missed out. Rocco and his Brothers (1960), directed by Luchino Visconti, picked up one nomination.

Football movies rarely cut the mustard on the big screen but the British movie that launched Keira Knightley, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), was unlucky not to find a place in your final list although the hooligan movie Football Factory (2004) and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1940) probably ended up in the right place. Gritty American football films, Brian’s Song (1971), with James Caan, The Longest Yard (1974), starring Burt Reynolds, and North Dallas Forty (1979) all gained some support.

The Oscar-winning baseball film The Pride Of The Yankees (1942), starring Gary Cooper, is another cracker and the tagline for The Bad News Bears (1976) — the coach is waiting for his next beer . . . the pitcher is waiting for her first bra — should have been enough of a vote-winner on its own. Basketball seems to attract the quirky and there were advocates for Michael J. Fox as a werewolf in Teenwolf (1985) and a dog superstar in Disney’s Air Bud (1997). Ron Shelton’s White Men Can’t Jump (1992) also came close.

A movie about bridge, Grand Slam (1933), and Dodgeball (2001) were oddball suggestions but nothing compared to the vote for Porridge (1979), based on the football match plotline that saw Fletcher (Ronnie Barker) and Godber (Richard Beckinsale in his last film performance) inadvertently escape from Slade Prison.

And some of our favourite movies did not even get a mention. How could you ignore Harold Lloyd’s silent classic The Freshman (1925) or the incomparable Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers (1932). Does nobody else appreciate Geordie (1955), The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars And Motor Kings (1976) or The Great White Hope (1970). And what about the skateboarding documentary Dogtown And Z-Boys (2001) or surfing classic The Endless Summer (1966). We could go on . . .

50 - Man Of Bronze (1951) Athletics

He did it all. And he did it better than anyone

Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Steve Cochran, Phyllis Thaxter, Dick Wesson, Jack Big Head

US
107mins
B/W

THE true story of Jim Thorpe (Lancaster), the Native American sports star who rose from an Oklahoma reservation to win two gold medals at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. However, Thorpe’s pentathlon and decathlon medals are stripped from him after it is discovered he has earned money playing minor league baseball and his life begins to unravel.

His marriage to his college sweetheart ends and he is forgotten by everyone except Glenn “Pop” Warner (Charles Bickford), his coach at Carlisle College. Thorpe had sold the film rights of his life to MGM for $1,500 and he also appeared in King Kong as a dancer during a spell as a Hollywood extra. The rugged Lancaster had been a gymnast and circus acrobat before entering the movies and appeared in the baseball movie Field of Dreams. Lancaster’s son, Bill, wrote the screenplay for the baseball movie The Bad News Bears, starring Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neil.

Times reader Maurice Ryan, from Spain, says: “I watched Man Of Bronze a long time ago. It’s how I still remember the great Jim Thorpe, the real greatest athlete ever.”

49 - The Big Blue (1988) Diving

Between what you know and what you wish, lies the secret of the Big Blue

Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Rosanna Arquette, Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno, Paul Shenar, Sergio Castellitto, Jean Bouise

France/US/Italy
119mins
Colour

LUC BESSON reached a mainstream cinema audience with Léon and The Fifth Element, but it was this passionate 1988 movie about free-diving that first made his name outside his native country of France. Jacques Mayol (Barr) and Enzo Molinari (Reno, whom Besson also cast in Léon) were childhood friends who grew up on the Mediterranean.

Molinari becomes the free-diving world champion but it is Mayol, whose father drowned in a diving accident, who is transfixed by the beauty and the power of the sea. While undergoing scientific tests in Peru, which show that he is more like a dolphin in physical state than a human being, Mayol captures the heart of Johana Baker (Arquette), who follows him to an international diving competition in Italy where he is reunited with his old friend. Mayol and Molinari dive deeper and deeper, risking their lives in pursuit of victory. The true star of this film is the sea itself and the gorgeous cinematography, as well as Eric Serra’s mesmerising score, which won a César award. Besson also won the best director award from the National Academy of France.

48 - Kingpin (1996) Tenpin bowling

You wouldn’t want to meet these pinheads in an alley

Director: Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, Vanessa Angel, Bill Murray, Chris Elliott, William Jordan

US
113 mins
Colour

AN EARLY effort from the Farrelly brothers (There’s Something About Mary, Stuck On You) this comedy about the seedy side of tenpin bowling is as crude, crass and funny as you would expect. Roy Munson (Harrelson) was the most promising bowler of his generation until he lost his hand in a hustling game gone wrong. Now he is a depressed alcoholic with a hook for a hand and a bleak future until he meets Ishmael Boorg (Quaid), a Quaker who sneaks away from his farm to go bowling without his family’s knowledge and is, of course, immensely talented.

Munson takes him under his wing and they set off to try to beat Ernie McCracken (Murray), Munson’s long-time rival, on the professional circuit. The best line comes from Murray, trying to put his rival off: “If he strikes, he’s the 1979 Odor-Eaters Champion. He’s got one foot in the frying pan and one in the pressure cooker. Believe me, as a bowler, I know that right about now, your bladder feels like an overstuffed vacuum cleaner bag.”

Moment to cringe: when Roy tries to “milk” a bull.

47 - The Color Of Money (1986) Pool

The hustler isn’t what he used to be, but he has the next best thing: a kid who is

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Helen Shaver, John Turturro, Bill Cobbs

US
119 mins
Colour
1 Oscar

THE Academy Awards judges can be capricious, often bestowing their favour on someone because they had been unfortunate not to win in the past, rather than for their latest offering. So it seemed with the 1987 Oscars, when Paul Newman picked up his first Best Actor award for The Colour of Money after seven unrewarded nominations, including for The Hustler, this film’s prequel, in 1961. The Color of Money’s director, Martin Scorsese, has been similarly spurned, with no little gold man to show after six nominations. But unlike his earlier efforts, such as Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, this film loses its focus and is ultimately a bit unfulfilling.

The film follows a similar plot to Kingpin (No 48). The ageing champ, Fast Eddie Felson (Newman), no longer has it but he finds a promising youngster, Vincent (Cruise), to take on his mantle. While Cruise was one of the bright young talents of Hollywood at the time, his character is little more than a vehicle for Newman’s character to get back out there and remake his name.

A road movie with balls, literally, which concentrates far more on the sport than the earlier film, the pair travel round the pool halls of the United States attempting to recapture the buzz of successful hustling for Felson while Cruise battles against his own greed and cockiness. Cruise apparently did his own trick shots for the film, although Scorsese wouldn’t allow him the time to perfect a shot in which he had to leap the cue ball over two other balls. That shot was played in the film by a professional player, Michael Sigel.

46 - When Saturday Comes (1996) Football

To Jimmy life was just a game . . . until the game became his life

Director: Maria Giese
Cast: Sean Bean, Emily Lloyd, Pete Postlethwaite, Craig Kelly, John McEnery, Ann Bell

UK
98 mins
Colour

IT’S not just a football magazine, When Saturday Comes is also a gritty mid-1990s kitchen-sink drama. The year before The Full Monty brought male stripping to Sheffield, the same city was the scene for this Sean Bean football film. Bean plays Jimmy Muir, a hard-drinking brewery worker who loves football but lacks the discipline to make the best of his talents. Spotted by the manager of non-League Hallam FC while playing for his pub side, Muir is signed up, performs brilliantly and then, would you believe it, gets a trial at Sheffield United. But can he stay off the booze long enough to impress?

United get an undeserved boost in the film: despite being a first division side during the 1995-96 season, when the film is set, they get to play Arsenal and Leeds United in league matches. Well, it was directed by an American.

45 - Remember The Titans (2000) American football

History is written by the winners

Director: Boaz Yakin
Cast: Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Wood Harris, Ryan Hurst, Donald Faison, Craig Kirkwood

US
113 mins
Colour

COLOUR prejudice has no place in American football these days, with white and black players being accepted as equal in all positions, even quarterback. But this touching film takes us back to the early 1970s and Virginia, where the resented integration of black and white children at school is most keenly felt on the school football team.

Coach Boone (Washington) is brought in as head coach over his white predecessor (Patton) but is told that he will be fired if the Titans lose a single game all season. Washington, the only actor of note in the film, is a hard master but fair — “I may be a mean cuss. But I’m the same mean cuss with everybody out there on that football field. I don’t give a damn about how sensitive these kids are, especially the black kids. You ain’t doin’ these kids a favour by patronising them. You crippling them.” Gradually he builds a multiracial team of brothers, who fight their way to the state championship. Less schmaltzy than you would expect from a Disney film.

44 - Le Mans (1971) Motor racing

Steve McQueen takes you for a drive in the country. The country is France. The drive is at 200mph

Director: Lee H Katzin
Cast: Steve McQueen, Siegfried Rauch, Elga Andersen, Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Fred Haltiner, Luc Merenda

US
106 mins
Colour

OFTEN considered the greatest — and certainly the most realistic — motor-racing movie made, Le Mans captures the thrills and spills of the famous French 24-hour race. Based on events during the 1970 race, Steve McQueen plays an American driver returning to competition a year after an accident has left him badly injured. As he prepares to take on his biggest rival in the race, he is also starting a romance with the wife of a driver who died in the same accident that nearly killed him.

Le Mans is thin on plot but makes up for it with real insight into the world of motor racing and acts as a time capsule for one of the most exciting eras in the sport. McQueen did most of his own driving for the movie, often at speeds exceeding 200mph, and one of the drivers lost a leg when they filmed a stunt and he crashed his car. The driver was David Piper, who received a special thanks “for his sacrifice” in the end credits. Michel Legrand’s original score was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Chris Lawrence, from Huntingdon, says: “Le Mans — great racing footage, having the sense not to complicate life with a plot — who needs more?”

43 - Rocky III (1982) Boxing

A fighter. A lover. A legend. The greatest challenge

Director: Sylvester Stallone
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith, Mr T

US
99 mins
Colour

TWO Rocky films make The Times’s Top 50, and there are no prizes for guessing which one does best, but the third film in the series, which was arguably more entertaining than the first, also had its fans. How could a film starring Hulk Hogan, the Muppets and Mr T not win fans? Having beaten Apollo Creed, Rocky is taking it easy with fights against nobodies. “The worst thing that can happen to any fighter is to get civilised,” his trainer says.

But then Clubber Lang (Mr T) beats him — and, what’s more, coins his famous phrase “I pity the fool” — shattering Rocky’s reputation. Creed surprisingly is the only man to believe that Rocky still has it and eggs him on for an attempt to reclaim his dignity and his title. Some might argue that having done that, Stallone should not have risked losing it all again with two very lame additional sequels. Nominated for an Oscar for best original song in Eye of the Tiger, by Survivor.

42 - Body And Soul (1947) Boxing

The story of a guy that women go for

Director: Robert Rossen
Cast: John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad, Joseph Pevney

US
104 mins
B/W
1 Oscar

THE 1940s produced three great boxing movies but only one makes our list. Here Comes Mr Jordan was nominated for seven Oscars, winning two, but was overlooked, as was Errol Flynn in Gentleman Jim. Instead, our readers picked this 1947 film about young Charley Davis (Garfield), his rise from the New York amateur ranks and his battles with not only opponents and unethical promoters but also his recently widowed mother, who doesn’t want him to fight. Does he choose to throw his final big fight to earn money or does the adulation matter more? The realistic look of the fight scenes was helped by James Wong Howe, the cinematographer, being pushed round the ring on rollerskates. The film won the Oscar for film editing and was nominated in two other categories, including Garfield, who died five years later at 39, for Best Actor.

41 - Major League (1989) Baseball

When these three oddballs try to play hardball, the result is totally screwball

Director: David S Ward
Cast: Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, Margaret Whitton, James Gammon, Rene Russo

US
107 mins
Colour

A SURPRISING entry in our chart, but enough of you must either be or have once been 15-year-old boys to vote this feel-good 1989 flick on to the threshold of the top 40. In a sort of baseball version of Brewster’s Millions or The Producers, Rachel Phelps, a former exotic dancer whose wealthy husband didn’t survive much past saying “I do”, takes control of his club, the Cleveland Indians, and begins to run it into the ground.

She hates the stadium, the fans and the climate in Milwaukee and wants to move the club to Florida, but she can only do that if attendance slumps. So, she decides to build the worst ragtag bunch of no-hopers in baseball, including Sheen as Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn, who earns his moniker for the inaccuracy of his pitching rather than his hell-raising. You can probably guess where the plot is heading, but predictability is not always a barrier to popularity. As well as Sheen, Russo and Wesley Snipes saw their careers take off after this. Sheen was actually not a bad pitcher in real life and had been offered a baseball scholarship at the University of Kansas.

40. Goal! (2005) Football

Every dream has a beginning

Director: Danny Cannon
Cast: Kuno Becker, Alessandro Nivola, Marcel Iures, Stephen Dillane, Anna Friel, Kieran O’Brien
US
118min
Colour

NOT the Brian Glanville-scripted documentary of the same title about the 1966 World Cup but a rags-to-riches tale in which Santiago (Becker), an Hispanic boy from Los Angeles, ends up playing in the Premiership for Newcastle United and helps them to qualify for Europe. Results apart, the movie has tried hard to be authentic, enlisting the support of Fifa and adidas and filming much of the action at St James’ Park, which is spliced with real footage of Newcastle playing. Alan Shearer and David Beckham follow the likes of Vinnie Jones, Pelé and John Wark on to the silver screen, although the crossbars are barely more wooden than Beckham.

The film was co-written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who imbued that other great football film, Porridge: the Movie, with rather less saccharine morality. Apparently Goal! is the first film in a trilogy. Presumably the next two have Santiago moving to Real Madrid and winning the World Cup rather than seeing Newcastle knocked out of the FA Cup by Mansfield Town.

39. Fat City (1972) Boxing

Life is what happens in between rounds

Director: John Huston
Cast: Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges, Susan Tyrell, Candy Clark, Nicholas Colasanto, Art Aragon
US
100min
Colour

HUSTON’S drama, with a screenplay adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, examines the hopes and dreams of two small-time boxers. Tully (Keach), an alcoholic farm labourer, is past his prime and living with Oma (Tyrell), a fellow outcast. Tully is trying to make a comeback while Ernie (Bridges) is trying to break into the game with the help of Ruben (Colasanto), his trainer, but soon learns the lesson that winning will not be easy.

The film is shot on location in Stockton, California, and Huston focuses on psychological and social reality rather than the theatricality of many boxing movies. At the Cannes Film Festival, the director said that the movie’s virtue was its "modesty" and critics agreed that he had made his best film in two decades. Although it was not a success at the box office, it helped to revive Huston’s artistic standing. Tyrell was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Stav Ross, a reader from London, says: "Perhaps the most honest depiction of boxing put on film. Beautifully crafted and at times depressing. A wonderful ensemble piece."

38. Phar Lap (1983) Racing

When he beats the odds, they change the rules

Director: Simon Wincer
Cast: Tom Burlinson, Richard Morgan, Robert Grubb, Simon Wells, Kelvyn Worth, Justin Ridley
Australia
107min
Colour

ALSO titled Heart Of A Nation, this is the true story of the legendary New Zealand-bred horse as well-known for his mysterious death as his considerable triumphs on the track. Despite a lack in pedigree, Phar Lap is bought on impulse by Harry Telford (Martin Vaughan), a trainer, and even though Phar Lap has an inauspicious start to his career, his faith in the horse is unshakable.

The horse becomes a winner mainly because of the devotion of Tommy Woodcock (Burlinson), his stable boy, and his success in leading races causes heavy losses for professional gamblers. Just after winning a big race in Mexico, Phar Lap dies and although the film is not explicit, it would seem that he has been killed by those with gambling interests.

The film is based on a book by Michael Wilkinson and the real-life Woodcock appears in the movie as an elderly trainer. Phar Lap won three prizes at the 1983 Australian Film Institute awards and was nominated in a further five categories.

37. Breaking Away (1979) Cycling

The movie that tells you exactly what you can do with your high school diploma

Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley, Barbara Barrie, Paul Dooley
US
100min
Colour
1 Oscar

THE only film in our top 50 about cycling — although one of two set in Indiana — this coming-of-age movie has been subtitled "The Boy Who Wanted to be Italian" by one reviewer. Dave Stoller (Christopher) has just left high school and is trying to discover what to do with his life. His main passion is cycling, and he is fascinated by the Italian Cinzano racing team. In trying to emulate them he takes language lessons, listens to operas in Italian and shaves his legs.

Despite his dedication to his hobby, Dave and his three equally misfit friends are seen as a dead loss, looked down on by the town’s university students and called a "cutter", short for "stone-cutter". When they try to chat up students, they are laughed at. Dave decides to pretend to be an Italian exchange student, not only to woo a girl but also as a way of breaking away from his own situation. The Little 500, an Indy 500 on two wheels, gives him the chance to take on the students and prove that he is not wasting his life.

36. Rollerball (1975) Futuristic

In the not-too-distant future, wars will no longer exist …

Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: James Caan, Maud Adams, John Houseman, John Beck, Moses Gunn, Pamela Hensley
US
129min
Colour

THIS film is set in 2018, 43 years after it was made, crime and wars have been eradicated and corporations rule the world and control the people. The violent game of "rollerball" is now the world sport, with Houston, led by their veteran player, Jonathan E (Caan), the leaders of the pack. However, Bartholomew (Houseman), the sinister corporate head, wants Jonathan to retire because his quest for personal freedom threatens control, but he decides to carry on in the championships even though it results in complications for himself and his team-mates.

This was the first movie to give full screen credits to stunt performers because Jewison, the director, was so impressed by their work in the action scenes. Jewison said that he cast Caan as Jonathan E after seeing him play Brian Piccolo, the Chicago Bears running back in Brian’s Song (1971). John Box won a Bafta for Best Art Direction and the movie picked up a further three global awards.

35. There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble (2000) Football

There’s only one Jimmy Grimble . . . and no substitute for life

Director: John Hay
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Lewis McKenzie, Jane Lapotaire, Gina McKee, Ben Miller, Wayne Galtrey, Ciaran Griffiths
UK/France
106min
Colour

THIRTY years ago, this story would have been told in weekly instalments in a comic rather than one 106-minute film hit. In fact, it was. The main thrust of the plot — shy schoolboy is picked on by everyone until he is given a pair of magic boots that propel him to footballing stardom and the local schools’ cup final — is quite similar to the comic strip, Billy’s Boots, that used to appear in Scorcher, Tiger and Eagle.

The story might be a bit formulaic (Grimble is a name rightly chosen, given the drudgery of Jimmy’s life), but it does have the surprising twist of being about a boy’s love of a Manchester football team — and they don’t wear red. Were the makers not thinking of the Asian market? Of course, when the final whistle is blown, Jimmy comes to realise that the boots aren’t magic after all, they just gave him the confidence to unleash his natural talent.

David Sigsworth, from Castleton, says: "An ode to Man City, the DVD to put on if my young son ever comes home and says, ‘Dad, can you take me to see United please.’ "

34. A League Of Their Own (1992) Baseball

To achieve the incredible you have to attempt the impossible

Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Jon Lovitz, David Strathairn
US
128min
Colour

THIS could have been terrible — most of Madonna’s films are and Mad magazine mocked it as "A League to Bemoan" — but instead the true story of a women’s baseball team during the Second World War is charming, heart-warming and very seldom sappy.

The story, which begins in the 1990s with the girls being installed in the baseball Hall of Fame, is based on the performance of the Rockford Peaches in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which existed from 1943 to 1954. Philip K. Wrigley, the chewing-gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs, created the league in fear that the Major League teams would disband during the war. While the makers said that the characters were fictional, the mother of Kelly Candaele, one of the writers, had played in the league.

As well as a battle against prejudice, the film is also a story about sibling rivalry between Dottie (Davis), "the best player in the league", and her sister, Kit (Petty). Davis joined the cast late as a replacement for Debra Winger, but she turns in a fine performance as a player as well as an actor. Looking over them is Hanks as Jimmy Dugan. Predictably, he is a one-time home-run king turned to drink (aren’t they always?), but Hanks injects charm and wit into the role.

33. One Day In September (1999) Olympic Games

The remarkable story of the Munich tragedy, revealing for the first time what really happened

Director: Kevin Macdonald
Documentary.
Narrator: Michael Douglas
Switzerland/Germany/UK
94min
B/W and colour
1 Oscar

FROM a charming comedy at No 34 to a horrifying slice of reality, this Oscar-winning documentary is about the kidnap and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Directed by Macdonald, who also directed Touching The Void (No 31, below), it is a brilliantly constructed reportage of the events, narrated by Douglas, linking in interviews with the surviving terrorist and the anti-terror officials who failed to prevent the atrocity.

The film is not without its critics, however, who are opposed to the perceived editorial spin, asking: "How can you make a film about terrorists without also focusing on what drives them to commit such crimes?" But why should a documentary-maker be objective? If you want to see the other side of the argument, watch Michael Moore. It might also be unfair to impose with hindsight 1990s standards of crime detection and terrorism prevention on the 1972 German authorities, which come in for harsh criticism.

Even without the political content, this would be an excellent sports film, however. The footage of the sporting events, with a superb electric Bach soundtrack, compete for our fascination with the terrorists. Among such evil, there is also so much beauty.

32. Seabiscuit (2003) Racing

A long shot becomes a legend

Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Tobey Maguire, David McCullough, Jeff Bridges, Paul Vincent O’Connor, Chris Cooper, Michael Ensign, James Keane
US
141min
B/W and colour

IN THIS Rocky-with-hooves, underdog-takes-on-the-best film, there are actually four long shots who seek redemption. Seabiscuit is an undersized, undervalued horse who has struggled from maltreatment; Charles Howard (Bridges) is the self-made man fallen on hard times in the Depression; Tom Smith (Cooper) the ageing trainer on whom he makes one last gamble; and Red Pollard (Maguire) a short-tempered jockey.

The quartet start to win race after race on America’s West Coast but are seen as just a novelty act by the snobbish East Coast elite, among whom is Samuel Riddle, owner of the 1937 Triple Crown-winner, War Admiral. A bet is struck between Riddle and Howard, the media get interested and the stage is set for the epic David versus Goliath clash on November 1, 1938. See this true story, if you will, as a metaphor for 1930s industrial America and the battle between the assembly line-produced, top-of-the-range marques and the struggling small farmer. Or just watch it for the excellently shot racing scenes. Nominated for seven Oscars in 2004, although it failed to pick up any in the year that The Lord Of The Rings swept the board.

31. Touching The Void (2003) Mountaineering

The closer you are to death, the more you realise you are alive

Director: Kevin Macdonald
Documentary: Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, Richard Hawking, Ollie Ryall, Joe Simpson, Simon Yates
UK
106min
Colour

THE greatest film about sport, in my opinion, is a documentary that follows two young British mountaineers up a savage tooth in the Andes called the Siula Grande. Getting to the thing is daunting enough. The decision actually to tackle this monster — when the fickle winds are shrieking "go home you fools" — defies mortal logic. There is no silver cup to be won and not a single cheering fan for probably 6,000 miles.

Macdonald’s stunning reconstruction of the 1985 ascent of Siula Grande by Simpson and Yates is the most harrowing antidote to sporting glory I’ve seen, a mixture of talking-head interviews and ice-pick thrills. The scenery is majestic, the weather unpredictable and the cool manner in which the climbers toss the odds — of making it up and back in one piece — inspires vertigo before a tin peg has been hammered into the granite face.

Yet there’s a romance about this terrifying challenge. Simpson and Yates are true grits. They are barely into their twenties, hungry for adventure and tough as nails. Their attack on the unconquered west face, Alpine-style — a purist technique where the duo are tied together by a bit of umbilical string — is a brilliant piece of chutzpah. They snake up ice walls, dangle over ghastly drops by their fingertips and spend three hours making tea at -62C (-80F). The reconstructed drama is a frigid miracle.

The horror kicks in when they try to descend. Simpson breaks a leg, night falls and Yates tries to slide his partner down the mountain in the pitch dark. Simpson tumbles over a ridge and the film pitches from a sporting crisis into a profound and ghastly parable about survival. For Yates, there is the moral agony of cutting the rope and sending his friend to certain death. Simpson’s nightmare is to discover he’s still alive (and left for dead) at the bottom of a crevasse. His despair is so awful it’s surreal. He reaches deep into his psyche for some sliver of spiritual comfort and discovers nothing. No God, and no grace in this utter isolation. This unspeakable void is the most powerful moment in the film, indeed any film I’ve seen about the price of sporting arrogance. The unfussy economy of the film merely underlines the fact that you don’t need orchestras, flashy lights and effects to fluff the stakes. You simply leave a broken man in a black hole with a dying torch.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER, CHIEF FILM CRITIC OF THE TIMES

30. Eight Men Out (1988) Baseball

The scandal that rocked a nation

Director: John Sayles
Cast: Jace Alexander, John Cusack, Gordon Clapp, Don Harvey, Bill Irwin, Perry Lang
US
119min
Colour

“SAY it ain’t so, Joe,” a kid says in disbelief that his sporting heroes have taken money to throw a match. But it was so, and it was $70,000 to lose the World Series in 1919. The scandal shocked baseball but these weren’t the high-earning flash boys that you get in the sport today. The Chicago White Sox were a great team but their owner, Charles Comiskey, was less than generous with their salaries.

In the event, two of the players, Buck Weaver (Cusack) and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (D. B. Sweeney), decide to reject the offer and play their best. The White Sox almost recover from a 3-1 deficit but the series is gone. Two years later the truth comes out and the players are sued. The “Black Sox curse” of failing to win the World Series lasted until this season.

Sayles directs the film well as a human tragedy rather than just a sports flick; he also appears in it as the eloquent journalist Ring Lardner, who sings “I’m forever blowing ball games” after the fifth game. The producers must have loved his diligence: contracted to bring in a film under two hours, it lasts 1hr 59.48sec.

29. Cinderella Man (2005) Boxing

One man’s extraordinary fight to save the family he loved

Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Paddy Considine, Bruce McGill
US
144min
Colour

IF YOU believed the movies, you’d feel that the Great Depression was filled with ordinary Joes coming out of nowhere and becoming successes. In this Ron Howard telling of a true story, the common man who rises again is James J Braddock (Crowe), a former prizefighter who was in debt and at rock bottom. In a last-ditch attempt to help his family and lift his self-esteem, Braddock comes back into the ring. No one gives him a chance, until he suddenly finds himself taking on the heavyweight champion of the world, which is why the movie makers love guys like him.

This film is itself lifted from the burden of predictability by the subtle acting of Crowe, who lost 50lbs for the film, and the excellent direction of Howard. The crunching final showdown between Braddock and Max Baer (Bierko), who has killed two men in the ring, is brutal and bloody, made more believable by installing a camera inside a tyre, which the actors were told to punch hard.

Despite being critically acclaimed, the film was a commercial flop. After its first month on release, it had taken only $50 million, but grew in popularity on word of mouth.


28. Olympia (1938) Olympic Games

The film of the XI Olympic Games

Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Documentary
Germany
111min
B/W

A GENIUS is incapable of propaganda even when specifically attempting to propagandise. You only need to read Kipling to see that: Kipling may have been consciously attempting to write of the glory of the British Empire, but his own humanity, his own wide vision, his own genius, constantly got in the way.

It is the same with Leni Riefenstahl, one of the few geniuses ever to make a film about sport. Olympia, her film of the 1936 Olympic Games, is a work of genius — and therefore it fails dramatically at whatever propaganda purpose she or her sponsors intended.

That is where the perfect tension of the film comes in when viewed with modern eyes. Her innovative photography — she was the first person to mount a camera on rails — created the vocabulary of sports coverage for the 21st century. Her spell-binding angles and dramatic slow-motion sequences bring out the grace and beauty of sport, rather than its drama.

The drama is to be found in our own historical knowledge. These were the Games of 1936: Hitler’s Games, the Games of Berlin. The film was made by Hitler’s film-maker, the same woman who filmed the Nuremberg rally for him under the title of the Triumph of the Will. How could it not be propaganda for the Nazi movement? The Games were set on their head by Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals for the United States and whose hand remained unshaken by the führer. But Owens himself was celebrated lovingly and lingeringly by Riefenstahl’s camera. Owens emerges from the film as the hero.

The film celebrates his physical perfection, his very quiet, almost meditative intensity, and it elevates him to a thrilling nobility.

This was the greatest scene-stealing act in the history of sport, as well as the most perfect rebutting of a wicked philosophy. There is no nobler theme for sport nor film-maker.
SIMON BARNES

27. Fever Pitch (1997) Football

Life gets complicated when you love one woman and worship eleven men

Director: David Evans
Cast: Ruth Gemmell, Colin Firth, Bea Guard, Neil Pearson, Luke Aikman, Richard Claxton
UK
102min
Colour

SOME films should never be remade. This adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel is a fun British comedy; the remake last year (transplanting it to Boston and making it about baseball) was dire. Never mind, we assumed that none of you meant the baseball flick when you nominated Fever Pitch. Colin Firth proves that he can do more than romantic period pieces (strutting about in his red and white Arsenal boxer shorts shows that) with a fine performance as the tortured fan who has to deal with a woman coming between him and his true love. He captures perfectly the childish selfishness of many football fans, particularly those who use football as a surrogate for their neglectful parents. Firth’s character is incapable of making any comparisons to life without a football analogy, yet as the film progresses he falls in love with a fellow teacher and discovers a need to grow up. More than just a football film, however, this is a decent rom-com set from a male point of view for a change. Oh and Arsenal win the league at the end, but you could guess that, couldn’t you?

26. The Set-Up (1949) Boxing

I want a man . . . not a human punching bag

Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter, Wallace Ford, Percy Helton
US
72min
B/W

BILL “STOKER” THOMPSON (Ryan) is an over-the-hill prizefighter who insists that he still has what it takes in the ring even though his voluptuous wife, Julie (Totter) is begging him to quit. Even Stoker’s manager, Tiny (Tobias), has little faith in his old warhorse — he is so confident his boy is a loser that he takes money for a dive from tough gambler Little Boy (Baxter).

Tiny adds to the confusion by not telling Stoker about the set-up as the fighter prepares to beat Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor) unaware of the dire consequences if he succeeds. The craggy Ryan with a pedigree of playing both Hollywood heavies and heroes turns in a convincing performance befitting a man who held the national collegiate boxing title for four years while a student at Chicago’s Loyola and Dartmouth. The film was nominated for a Bafta Best Film award and won two prizes at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.

25. Rudy (1993) American football

When people say dreams don’t come true, tell them about Rudy

Director: David Anspaugh
Cast: Sean Astin, Jon Favreau, Ned Beatty, Greta Lind, Scott Benjaminson, Mary Ann Thebus
US
116min
Colour

A SMALL-kid-becomes-a-big-star film, Rudy grew up in the American equivalent of Sheffield but has always dreamed of playing college football for Notre Dame. Sadly he is stunted, both physically and mentally. Sean Astin (last seen as Sam Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings) has one thing on his side, however: grim determination.

When his best friend is killed, Rudy decides that he has to give himself one shot to achieve his dream. He goes through junior college in an attempt to get his poor high school grades up to scratch, gets rejected by Notre Dame three times and then finally makes it. He’s still too much of a runt to get into the team, but his never-quit attitude impresses the players, who force the coach to give him a chance, saying they won’t play unless Rudy does, even if it is for only a few seconds in the final match. A real feel-good film with a tearjerking ending. If you’ve ever wanted a whole stadium to be chanting your name, this is a film for you.

24. Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001) Football

He knows FA about football

Director: Steve Barron
Cast: Ricky Tomlinson, Amanda Redman, Bradley Walsh, Philip Jackson, Phill Jupitus, Dean Lennox Kelly
UK
89min
Colour

IF YOU thought that things were bad under Sven, this film will make you be grateful. When the England manager suddenly has a heart attack, the call goes out for a replacement. The most suitable people have the good sense to turn it down, so the burden falls on Mike Bassett (Tomlinson), a scruffy, foul-mouthed, very non-Soho Square character plucked from the obscurity of Norwich City.

Bassett insists on doing things his way, scribbling his team sheet on a fag packet (“England will play, four-four-f***ing-two”), making a used-car salesman pal his assistant and replacing England’s best player with a former great who now has an alcohol problem. “You could go to jail for this,” he tells the player after a boozed-up car crash. “What sort of system am I going to play then? Three across the middle and one in bloody Pentonville?”

Needless to say, England are less than impressive under his tutelage and the press turn against him, but by a fluke he qualifies for the World Cup in Rio, which is where the fun really begins. At least Bassett got England there, unlike Graham Taylor . . .

23. National Velvet (1944) Racing

MGM’s great technicolour heart drama

Director: Clarence Brown
Cast: Mickey Rooney, Donald Crisp, Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Revere, Angela Lansbury, Jackie Butch Jenkins
US
123min
Colour
Two Oscars

AT LAST a film made during the Second World War that involves messages about courage under adversity without the need for a Bren gun. A 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor plays Velvet, the girl with a passion for horses who wins a spirited steed, Pi (short for Pirate) in a lottery. Taylor lavishes as much love on the horse as she does on men in her grown-up movies and together with a vagabond former jockey named Mi Taylor (Rourke), she begins to train Pi for the Grand National.

It’s impossible to watch this beautifully made film (one of the early ones in Technicolor) without welling up with warm happy feelings, even boys. It is sentimental without being cloying, the feel-good film par excellence, as Velvet’s single-minded determination, supported by her mother (Revere, in an Oscar-winning role), sees her through. After the film was made, young Miss Taylor was given the horse by the producers as a thank you. Ahhhhh.

22. Lagaan (2001) Cricket

Once upon a time in India

Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Cast: Aamir Khan, Gracy Singh, Rachel Shelley, Paul Blackthorne, Suhasini Mulay, Kulbhushan Kharbanda
India
224min
Colour

AT LAST, a film about cricket, and it’s a good one too. The inhabitants of an impoverished Indian village in Victorian India beg their colonial masters to be excused from paying the lagaan, or tax. Instead the evil British officer comes up with a bet: if the Indians can beat his men in a game of cricket, a sport they have never played, then they will be excused the tax; otherwise it will be trebled. One man, Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), has the chutzpah to take up the challenge.

He builds together a rag-tag bunch of villagers, ignoring the prejudices of religion and caste to find the greatest potential. The largely Hindu side are joined by a Sikh mercenary who has played the game before and they enlist an outcast with an arm disorder that means he can spin the ball wildly. The film also counters sexism: the English captain’s sister agrees to coach the team on the sly.

The film has all the singing and dancing scenes you would associate with Bollywood — and is none the poorer for it — but where it really excels is the gripping cricket match itself, which lasts for much longer than you could dare hope. In the end it comes down to one ball, one hit and whether a catch is held . . . Great stuff.

Simon Fourmy, a reader from Bedford, says: “The film’s brilliance lies not only in the use of cricket as a metaphor for imperial relations and India’s march toward independence, but also in the way it combines a tutorial on the many idiosyncrasies of this most arcane of games.”

21. Tin Cup (1996) Golf

Golf pro. Love amateur

Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, Linda Hart, Dennis Burkley
US
135min
Colour

THIS fits into the “washed up pro goes for one last hit at the big time” category. Roy McAvoy (Costner) is a failed professional golfer who lives in a Winnebago at a driving range in Texas. He falls in love with a student (Russo), who is the girlfriend of his long-time rival (and far more successful golfer) David Simms (Johnson). To win her heart, Roy takes up the game seriously again and tries to qualify for the US Open.

So far, so familiar, but Costner’s charm (seen also in such great sports films as Bull Durham and Field of Dreams) gives this greater poignancy. It seems that in an otherwise iffyish career, no one does faded former professional better than Costner. He also put the hard work in to improve his game to a single-figure handicap and make the golf scenes believable, even if few golfers can achieve backspin when using a wood.

20. Grand Prix (1966) Motor racing

All the glamour and greatness of the world’s most exciting drama of speed and spectacle

Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Yves Montand, Toshio Mifure, Brian Bedford, Jessica Walter
US
179min
Colour
Three Oscars

IN MUCH the same way as the Devil has all the best tunes, so the non-sporting films have all the best car action — Bullitt, The Italian Job, The French Connection, even The Cannonball Run — which probably accounts for the dearth of decent motor-racing films. Well, that and the insistence of Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise to ruin utterly the genre in recent years. So we have to go back some distance to find a decent one and while Le Mans is a terrific film (not least for the splendid lack of dialogue), Grand Prix gets my vote.

Directed by the estimable Frankenheimer and starring Garner as Pete Aron, an American driver, the film also featured many of the drivers around at the time, such as Jochen Rindt, Phil Hill and, fleetingly, Graham Hill and Jim Clark. But perhaps its most gripping feature was the use of the split-screen technique. Filmed in Super Panavision, at a time when camera technology was relatively archaic, Grand Prix won three Oscars, including one for its editing and although the effects can look a little dated to those of us now happily ensconced in digital multiscreen television, the film still holds a remarkable fascination as the mocked-up race scenes are intercut with real footage.

There is a marvellous moment, too, of art presaging life when Yves Montand, in the Ferrari, stalls on the grid in the final race of the season, with him second in the points and chasing the title, although that’s where the comparisons with Michael Schumacher in Japan in 1998 end, as Montand’s character dies when the Ferrari crashes out.

Although it is almost 40 years old, Grand Prix still sets the standard against which all motor-racing films will be judged. And, for me, it sums up sport so completely with the quote from Montand’s character, responding to a conversation about how terrible it was that a driver would go faster on his way to victory after passing an accident on the track. “No, there is no terrible way to win,” he says. “There is only winning.”
CATHERINE RILEY

19. Caddyshack (1980) Golf

At last, a comedy that bites

Director: Harold Ramis Cast: Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Bill Murray, Michael O’Keefe, Sarah Holcomb
US
98min
Colour

GOLFERS and gophers conspire to disrupt the smooth running of a smart and exclusive country club in Ramis’s first outing as director. He would later be reunited with Murray on screen in Ghostbusters and behind the camera in Groundhog Day.

The main plot centres on a millionaire’s plans to build condominiums around the club and the resistance it meets from the wealthy and eccentric members, but there are sub-plots involving a caddy (O’Keefe) who is trying to raise money to go to college and Murray’s war, with firearms, against the furry critter chewing up his greens. Plot isn’t really the point of this romp, however. Instead it is a stage for three of the finest comic talents of the 1980s (Murray, Chase and Dangerfield) to wreak their anarchic exploits. And despite there being much of the crass humour seen in Ramis’s Animal House here, there are some clever wordplay lines worthy of the Marx Brothers, such as when Chase’s character puts down a judge’s immodest claim that he is “no slouch myself” by saying: “Don’t sell yourself short, you’re a tremendous slouch.”

The best film of all time? No. Best comedy ever? Hmm. Best comedy of 1980? Fans of Airplane might disagree. Best film about golf? Not according to our poll. Yet despite all that, this is a cracking film and fully deserves its place in our top 20.

18. Hoop Dreams (1994) Basketball

People always say to me: “When you get to the NBA, don’t forget about me”

Director: Steve James
Documentary
US
170min
Colour

A DOCUMENTARY following the lives of inner-city Chicago teenagers, Arthur Agee and William Oates, who dream of lives as basketball superstars in the NBA. The film begins at the start of their high school years and ends almost five years later as they start college, still nurturing their hoop dreams.

The boys attend the same school as their idol, Isiah Thomas, the former Detroit Piston, but one is forced to leave after a year to be closer to his home — just one of the lows in a rollercoaster ride through life in a housing project. This stunning real-life drama helped to change the rules for how the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences hands out awards for documentary work when it failed to get a much-deserved nomination for best documentary, although it was nominated for best editing and picked up 13 other prizes.

Jonathan Conick, a reader from Pontypool, says: “It is by far and away the best sports film ever made. Spanning ten years the film takes you deep into the heart of what it is like to be a young talented American sportsman. It also contains the most nail-biting single sequence of sporting action ever captured on film.”

17. The Natural (1984) Baseball

Boyhood dreams, a bat made from a tree struck by lightning and most importantly, a never-ending passion for the game

Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Robert Redford, Robert Duvall,
Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey
US
134min
Colour

EVEN non-Americans will identify with this story of the fulfillment of a boy’s dream to be a sporting star. Roy Hobbs (a 14-year-old boy played in later life by Redford) sculpts his own bat out of a felled oak tree. He grows up, impresses Major League scouts and Duvall’s sports writer and is set for the big time before he is shot by a woman.

Some time later, an older Hobbs reappears from nowhere to join a failing baseball team and, using his childhood bat, he takes them to the top of the league. In the finale, it’s the last inning and Hobbs is the only man who can win the title. Inspired by the new knowledge that he fathered his childhood sweetheart’s kid, he prepares to face the pitcher — and then a stain of blood starts to seep through his jersey . . . It sounds predictable and schmaltzy, but somehow this touching fairy tale of a film, which was nominated for four Oscars, manages to avoid being a “natural” baseball movie.

16. The Hustler (1961) Pool

A motion picture that probes the stranger . . . the pick-up . . . why a man hustles for a buck or a place in the sun

Director: Robert Rossen
Cast: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Myron McCormick, Murray Hamilton US
134min
B/W
Two Oscars

NEWMAN plays “Fast Eddie” Felson, a small-time pool hustler with gigantic ambition and a streak of self-destruction. Having been crushed on the baize by the legendary Minnesota Fats (Gleason), he faces an uphill task to regain his confidence. A ruthless new manager puts steel back in his spine, but does Felson really want to throw away his girlfriend (Laurie), and perhaps even his soul, in pursuit of glory? The prequel to The Color of Money (No 47 in our list) is not a film about winning but about crippling defeat and how you react to it. The screening of the pool matches themselves is a bit ropey, but it is the capturing of the psychological drama, the bluff, the seediness, the strength of the characters, that is where the film earns its plaudits. The film, which won Oscars for art direction and cinematography, catapulted Newman into the top rank in Hollywood, but he is not the only fine actor in it. Gleason, Scott (as Bert Gordon, his manager) and Laurie all received Oscar nominations.

15. Hoosiers (1986) Basketball

They needed a second chance to finish first

Director: David Anspaugh
Cast: Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, Dennis Hopper, Sheb Wooley, Fern Persons, Chelcie Ross
US
115min
Colour

YES, this is a predictable story of a former great (Hackman) and a former alcoholic (the Oscar-nominated Hopper) cobbling together a team of high-school misfits and turning them into champions, but the sharp characterisation of Hackman and his “Hoosiers” creates a more convincing, heart-rending story than most.

The Indiana high school is so small that it can barely field a team but they still have the dream of becoming state champions. But how can Hackman craft a great side when he doesn’t have the wholehearted support of the parents, when the best player is withdrawn and when his assistant coach still yearns after liquor? Somehow, he does it . . . and, would you believe it?, it all comes down to one shot.

Mark Meyer, a reader from Indiana, said: “The film is about young student athletes who labour for a love of their sport. Absent are shoe deals, drugs and the self-indulgent attitudes of many pro athletes. The glory of these young players is more humble but they are heroes to the small-town people they represent.”

14. Happy Gilmore (1996) Golf

He doesn’t play golf . . . he destroys it

Director: Dennis Dugan
Cast: Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen, Frances Bay, Carl Weathers, Allen Covert
US
92min
Colour

SANDLER achieves what was thought very difficult, if not impossible, in creating a golf film that is more popular, if not necessarily more funny, than Caddyshack. He plays a failed ice hockey player with an anger problem (“I’m the only guy to ever take off his skate and try to stab somebody.”) He has lots of ambition, lots of power, just no ability at skating — and beating up the coach may also have been unwise. He takes up golf in order to pay his grandmother’s tax bills and save her from being turfed on to the street. Just one problem: he still thinks like an ice hockey player, and that doesn’t fit in well with his fellow pros, even if it brings fans into the game.

Yes, it is unbelievable that he can slip straight from the driving range on to the PGA Tour. And, yes, people with such anger management issues would probably not be ideal golfers anyway. But let’s gloss over that. Gilmore’s rivalry with Shooter McGavin (McDonald) is played out well, as is his relationship with his coach, Chubbs (Weathers), a former professional, who explains why he was unable to play on the Tour: Gilmore: “I’m sorry. Because you were black?” Chubbs: “Hell no, damn alligator bit my hand off.”

13. Bull Durham (1988) Baseball

It’s all about sex and sport. What else is there?

Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Trey Wilson, Robert Wuhl, William O’Leary
US
108min
Colour

THE excellent tagline sums it up for many of us, but when you look like Costner you probably get all the sex and sport you need without trying. Costner plays Crash Davis, a veteran minor league catcher who is given the job of maturing Robbins’s wayward rookie, “Nuke” LaLoosh. The coaching turns into a love triangle when Annie Savoy (Sarandon), a rather odd groupie, becomes involved with both men.

Savoy restricts herself to one new lover a season — anyone who is any good always goes to the Major Leagues and leaves her — and she is torn between the bright talent and the ageing pro with whom she has more in common.

More than either a sports film or a rom-com, this film has enough well-shot baseball scenes to absorb those who don’t just want a love story, while keeping the focus strongly on the developing characters.

12. Slap Shot (1977) Ice hockey

Slap Shot out slaps . . . out swears . . . out laughs

Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Strother Martin, Michael Ontkean, Jennifer Warren, Lindsay Crouse, Jerry Houser
US
123min
Colour

YET another excellent Newman sports movie (the highest of his three appearances in our top 50), this farcical look at a mad sport features the veteran actor as Reggie Dunlop, the player-coach of a small-town side, who has problems with his owner, the hostile crowds and the extreme violence of his players.

Dunlop is not above using dirty tricks to turn around the Charlestown Chiefs’ losing season but he has his hands full when the owner brings in the Hanson Brothers, three oafs with milkbottle glasses who are more interested in fighting than playing hockey. The sad thing is, the crowd loves their bloodlust and Dunlop is resigned to holding the brothers up to the rest of the team as inspiration. The film perhaps affected Newman too much. He has admitted that he was a cleanmouthed young lad before he appeared in this. “Since Slap Shot my language is right out of the locker room,” he said. So don’t watch this in front of your grandmother.

Stu Bradon, a reader from Durham, says: “This is one of those films where fans of ice hockey will not have a bad word said against it.”

11. Escape To Victory (1981) Football

Now is the time for heroes

Director: John Huston
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Pelé, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles, Paul Van Himst
US
110min
Colour

THERE will be film critics around the land choking over their cereal to read that this almost made it into the top ten. Barry Norman, for instance, told us: “Escape to Victory is crap.” But you clearly love it, even if it is only ironically. Sportsmen should by and large stick to sport rather than films. The 1953 cricket movie The Final Test featured Alec Bedser, Denis Compton and Len Hutton and gained not a single vote in our poll. Whereas a first

XI featuring Pelé, Osvaldo Ardiles, Bobby Moore and half of the 1980 Ipswich Town team has won glowing plaudits. Perhaps it is because in comparison with Stallone, playing the goalkeeper Hatch here, even John Wark, the Scotland and Ipswich player, looks like a good actor.

The plot involves the Nazis challenging a team of Allied prisoners of war to a football match to raise morale in Germany, and was inspired by a real wartime game in Ukraine between the Nazis and former Dynamo Kiev players. The PoWs, coached by Caine, use the match as an excuse to plot their escape.

Reportedly Stallone wanted to score the winning goal, a fantastical scenario that never happens outside Carlisle United. To soothe his ego, he was allowed to face a crucial late penalty instead. For lovers of men putting honour before safety, the half-time decision (with the team trailing 4-1) not to escape as planned but to go back out there and win the game brings a tear to the eye. And to think that you thought there were ten better fims than this . . .

Scott Barwick, a reader from Dagenham, says: “Terrible cheesy acting, unbelieveable storyline . . . fantastic all the same.”

10. Cool Runnings (1993) Bobsleigh

One dream. Four Jamaicans. Twenty below zero

Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Leon, Doug E Doug, Rawle D Lewis, Malik Yoba, John Candy, Raymond J Barry
US
98min
Colour

WE MOCKED it and you responded by voting this Disney comedy about the Jamaican bobsleigh team into your top ten. Perhaps we were tempting fate, when launching the hunt for the greatest sports movies a month ago, to lump this perfectly charming film in with such genuinely dire offerings as Mighty Ducks and Major League rather than to elevate it to the company of Oscar winners.

The film features the late John Candy as Irving Blitzer, a disgraced former bobsleigh rider who had had his Olympic gold medal stripped from him for cheating. Years later, Derice Bannock (Leon) fails to qualify for the Olympic 100 metres and decides to try his hand at the Winter Games instead, with the help of his father’s friend, Blitzer, and three other Jamaicans.

Blitzer sums up the problems facing them: “All right. Let me lay out some difficulties for you. Snow: you don’t have any. It’s nine hundred degrees outside. Time: you don’t have any. The Olympics are in three months. And me, you don’t have me. As far as I’m concerned, the sport of bobsledding no longer exists. I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to coach it, and most of all I don’t want to be within two thousand miles of anybody who does.”

Despite all this, he builds and trains the team in Jamaica and they head for Calgary, where they risk ridicule in the freezing weather. Instead, team spirit and confidence carry them farther than they may have hoped. But although this is inspired by the true events rather than a documentary record, the studio shies away from the predictable and incredible bestowing of gold medals.

The Olympics naturally produces great stories of heroic failure as well as achievement. No one has yet produced a film of Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards or Eric “The Eel” Moussambani, but Cool Runnings shows that there is a market for films about the plucky little guy trying his hardest — and still failing.

Incidentally, not one of the Jamaican bobsleigh riders in the film were born in Jamaica — all four came from New York City.

9. Jerry Maguire (1996) American football

Everybody loved him . . . everybody disappeared

Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr, Renee Zellweger, Kelly Preston, Jerry O’Connell, Jay Mohr
US
139min
Colour
1 Oscar

IS THERE any place for morals in the marketing of sport? Jerry Maguire (Cruise) is a sports agent who is willing to do just about anything to get the best deals for his clients (and by extension a handsome commission for himself). The world of ruthless promotion seems sadly more and more relevant to sport in these days of mutiple brandings and endorsements. But he starts to feels uncomfortable about the business; it has become too much about the money and not about the clients. He pens a memo, voicing his doubts, for which he gets a standing ovation from his colleagues and a P45 from his boss.

Only one client, a moderately talented wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals called Rod Tidwell (Gooding), and one colleague, Dorothy, a widowed accountant who has developed a crush on him (a lovable performance from Zellweger), stay with him and offer to help him to rebuild his career.

Maguire eventually ends his failing relationship and falls for Dorothy, and this film turns into more of a romance (although with not enough comedy to be classed a rom-com) than a sports movie. The baseball and football scenes are so-so, but the essence of the film is, as Roger Eber wrote, “about two men who learn to value something more important than money, and about two women who always knew”.

Despite the excellence of the script and the quality of the acting, you need to be in the right mood to watch this. Cruise isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and while his relationship with Zellweger is played out well, there is still something unbelievable about him, particularly once he has lost his job. And while the film has lots of things to say about greed and priorities, it can’t get away from the Hollywood need for a sugary ending. Having an exceptionally cute child playing Zellweger’s offspring doesn’t help.

The film was nominated for five Oscars, winning Gooding one for Best Supporting Actor, but was a long way from the quality of some of the other nominations for Best Picture. If Jerry Maguire had beaten The English Patient, Fargo or Shine, it would have been a travesty. Nonetheless, it made stacks at the box office. It was the fifth Tom Cruise film in a row to make more than $100 million, a record. As his character repeatedly yells: “Show me the money!”

8. Million Dollar Baby (2004) Boxing

It’s the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you

Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Mike Colter, Lucia Rijker
US
132min
Colour
4 Oscars

FEW directors subvert genres better than Eastwood. Unforgiven was far from the typical Western, and Million Dollar Baby stands out as a very unusual boxing movie, and not just because it is women beating seven bells out of each other.

As usual, Eastwood, directing his 25th film, gives himself the best part, although Freeman was originally meant to play Frankie Dunn, a devoutly Catholic boxing trainer (and occasional poet) struggling to deal with the estrangement of his daughter. Dunn is given a chance for redemption when Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank), a tough but delicate fighter, walks into his gym. She has fought well on raw talent and belief, but needs someone to believe in her and develop her potential.

Boxing is her way up in the world, “otherwise I might as well go back home, buy a used trailer and get a deep fryer”, she says. Grudgingly, Frankie takes her on and the two develop a touching relationship before a life-and-death dilemma threatens to upset their world.

This is a masterpiece of a film, although many would say that the emotional turmoil near the end detracts from the beauty of the boxing story. It is narrated by Freeman in his famous treacley tones, heard also in The Shawshank Redemption and the new film March of the Penguins. He plays “Scrap” Dupris, Dunn’s best friend, who convinces Dunn to give Maggie a chance.

Swank is astonishing as the fiercely intense Maggie who comes to love Dunn. Not in a romantic sense; she simply views him as her saviour. Swank underwent a gruelling training schedule to get fit for the film, gaining nearly 20 pounds of muscle in the process. It is hard to see how Sandra Bullock or Ashley Judd, who were both approached about the role, could have handled it better.

The film won four Oscars earlier this year: the Best Picture and Best Director awards and acting awards for Swank and Freeman. Eastwood, nominated for Best Actor, was one of three unrewarded Oscar nominations. He has won three Academy Awards for direction but none, yet, for acting. It is hard to see how he could perform any better than he does in this film.

7. Any Given Sunday (1999) American football

Life is a contact sport

Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J
US
150min
Colour

AGEING football coach, Tony D’Amato (Pacino), is struggling with his personal and professional life while trying to hold together the Miami Sharks. He is dealt a cruel blow when the star quarterback, Cap Rooney (Quaid), is injured and D’Amato is forced to turn to third-string benchwarmer, Willia Beaman (Foxx). Beaman seizes what he believes to be his last shot at the big-time and turns in a string of stunning performances forcing D’Amato to question his traditional approach to the game and, indeed, life itself. Further pressure is exerted on the coach by the franchise’s aggressive new co-owner/president, Christina Pagniacci (Diaz), who is beginning to flex her muscles in this male-dominated arena after the death of her father.

As the movie develops, it is apparent that marketing and business are as much a part of the game as the sport on the gridiron and the coaches and players become no more than mere properties. As D’Amato says: “It’s TV, it changed everything, changed the way we think for ever. I mean, the first time they stopped the game to cut away to some f****** commercial that was the end of it. Because it was our concentration that mattered, not theirs, not some fruitcake selling cereal. ”

According to director Stone, the NFL tried to stop players from taking part in the movie although Terrell Owens, then a San Francisco 49ers wide receiver, can be seen playing and scoring two touchdowns for the Sharks. His name on the back of his shirt is Owens but he sports the No 82 rather than his real-life number of 81. The NFL did, however, prevent Stone from using any real team logos or stadiums in the movie.

Diaz, who won two awards for her portrayal of the pushy president, also played the daughter of a sports team owner in There’s Something About Mary (1997).

Matthew Clifford says: “The greatest sports movie, in my opinion, is Any Given Sunday. The storyline is really well thought out and the action scenes are nothing short of spectacular.”

6. Field of Dreams (1989) Baseball

All his life, Ray Kinsella was searching for his dreams. Then, one day, his dreams came looking for him

Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Cast: Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta, James Earl Jones, Gaby Hoffman, Timothy Busfield
US
107min
Colour

COSTNER gets a lot of criticism for some of the films he picks, but he has a knack of appearing in excellent sports movies. This is the third of his films to make our top 50, after Tin Cup (No 21) and Bull Durham (No 13), and a fourth, American Flyers, about cycling, just missed out on the list.

Costner plays Ray Kinsella, a farmer in Iowa who hears voices out in his cornfield. “If you build it, he will come,” the voice tells him, but instead of putting this down to sunstroke, Kinsella interprets it as an order to build a baseball field amid the corn. Not such a crazy premise: years ago, people said they got spiritual messages to build cathedrals.

The baseball field becomes the venue for a reunion of the ghosts of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (Liotta) and the other Chicago White Sox players who were banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series (see also Eight Men Out, at No 30 in our poll). When the voices continue, Kinsella seeks out an explanation from an elderly doctor (Lancaster, in his final screen role) and a reclusive author, Terence Mann (Earl Jones), who in the novel on which the film is based was instead J. D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye. The film never tries to explain why Kinsella should be hearing voices, but perhaps that would distract from the Frank Capra-like feel-good nature of the film.

The movie was originally called Shoeless Joe but test audiences felt it sounded like a film about a hobo, so it was changed to the more opaque Field of Dreams.

This is the second of the films in our top ten to have been originally offered to Tom Hanks. He was also considered for the main role in Jerry Maguire. It is unclear whether Hanks’s two Oscars are any compensation for missing out on a place or two in the estimation of readers of The Times sports pages.

5. This Sporting Life (1963) Rugby league

Never before has the screen exploded with such raw emotions

Director: Lindsay Anderson
Cast: Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts, Alan Badel, William Hartnell, Colin Blakely, Vanda Godsell
UK
134min
B/W

OUR top 50 has had more sugary moments than a Christmas stocking, so it is a welcome antidote that the top five begins with a dour kitchen-sink drama that has more grit scattered over it than a motorway in December. This Sporting Life, like the other four films on this page, is a masterpiece. Based on the novel by David Storey, Harris plays Frank Machin, an angry young man playing rugby league in a northern mining town in the 1960s. He lodges with Mrs Hammond (Roberts), a widow whose husband was killed in an accident at Machin’s employers. Machin, a local celebrity for his rugby exploits, would like a try with the widow but his impulsive and angry temperament, barely kept in check on the rugby field, as well as her lack of passion, refusing to surrender her love to another man who could leave her, hold him back.



The rugby scenes are beautifully shot, with use of the slow motion adding beauty to Harris’s lithe athleticism. He lives on the edge of barbarism and it is not just contained to the field of play, as his callous squashing of a spider, whose blood seeps down a pristine wall, shows. Yet he is not always the bully. In one scene, Machin is supposed to be roughed up behind the scrum, so the director asked Derek Turner, a real rugby player with a bit part, to make the contact look real. Turner did that, thumping Harris so hard he was knocked out and filming for the day was abandoned.

For those who know Harris only from his appearance as Professor Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, this film shows how great an actor he was. The role came easily to him, having played rugby to a high standard before contracting tuberculosis at the age of 19, but he excels not just at the physical side of action. His turbulent relationship with Roberts earned them both an Academy Award nomination. This film is notable as the screen debut of Edward Fox and it also brought William Hartnell to the attention of Verity Lambert, first producer of Doctor Who. PATRICK KIDD

4. Rocky (1976) Boxing

His whole life was a million-to-one shot

Director: John D. Avildsen
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith, Thayer David
US
119min
Colour
Three Oscars

EVEN now, nearly 30 years after the release of Rocky, sportsmen and women around the world go for their early morning run with the stirring theme tune blaring in their iPods and imagine themselves sprinting up the steps of Philadelphia’s Art Museum.

But Rocky is far more than an inspirational tale about the power of the human spirit and the rise of the underdog. It is also a sensitive and powerful study of introversion. The eponymous hero is a self-conscious mumbler, brought to life by Stallone in a performance demanding comparison with Marlon Brando in his prime. Adrian (Shire), the girl who works in the local pet shop, is shy almost to the point of muteness.

The ironies of their clumsy romance are sympathetically examined; the pause before their first kiss a particularly memorable moment. The rousing climax, in which their embrace in the centre of the ring overshadows the announcement of the judges’ scoring of Rocky’s attempt on the world heavyweight title, shows the importance of this strand to an otherwise muscular narrative.

Some have interpreted Rocky’s defeat by Apollo Creed as a pop at Hollywood’s cloying sentimentality, but this is to underestimate the liberal sprinkling of sugar throughout Stallone’s script. He loses the fight but he wins the girl and achieves his stated ambition of being on his feet at the final bell.

This is an unabashedly feel-good movie. It is unfortunate that the original Rocky is often confused with its increasingly desperate sequels, something that has tainted its reputation. Let us not forget that the original was both a popular and critical triumph: it repaid its flimsy $1 million budget more than a hundred times over at the box office and beat Taxi Driver to the Best Picture Oscar in 1976. It still rates as one of the most uplifting fairytales in cinematic history. MATTHEW SYED

3. When We Were Kings (1996) Boxing

The untold story of the Rumble in the Jungle

Director: Leon Gast
Documentary
US
89min
Colour
One Oscar

MANY of the films in our list are based on a true story, but this documentary is perhaps about the greatest sports story of them all. It is the tale of two rivals at the peak of their powers in 1974: Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought to be past his best, but his ambition cannot be underestimated; George Foreman is ten years younger and the world heavyweight champion. Between them stands Don King, the promoter par excellence who finds a backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of what was then Zaire and “archetype of a closet sadist” in the words of Norman Mailer, one of the fight’s chroniclers.

The stage is set for one of the finest fights in boxing history, when Ali soaked up brutal punishment from Foreman, dancing to the ropes and letting himself be hit over and over, before bouncing out and unleashing a devastatingly fast hammer blow on his younger rival. The “rope a dope” tactic seemed suicidal and almost definitely contributed to Ali’s later ill health, but as the means for a twist in a great tale, it works brilliantly.

But this is more than just a boxing film. When We Were Kings tells the tale of that whole summer of 1974, of Foreman’s eye injury, which meant the fight was pushed back a month, of the build-up of giant retinues, of Ali’s charm offensive with the citizens of Zaire. His marches through the streets, whipping up enthusiasm for him, setting himself up as the heir of Africa against Foreman’s Mr USA, the constant shouts of “Ali bumaye”, or “Ali, kill him”.

This is also a chronicle of Zaire under Mobuto and of the fantastic concerts laid on by King, with performers such as James Brown and B. B. King flown out to add to the colour. The original When We Were Kings film, which was delayed for 22 years because of contract negotiations, was supposed to be simply the tale of the concert, the “African Woodstock”. The injury to Foreman in training meant that the director decided to take in the fight too.

The story of the fight and the build-up is told through the commentators who were there and working with the camps, men such as George Plimpton or Mailer, whose book of that summer, entitled The Fight, would be a worthy contender for the best sports book. PATRICK KIDD

2. Chariots of Fire Athletics

Two men chasing dreams of glory

Director: Hugh Hudson
Cast: Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Ian Holm, Nigel Havers, Nicholas Farrell, Cheryl Campbell
UK
123min
Colour
Four Oscars

THE British are coming . . . second in your poll. It may be a story of devotion and pluck and athletic glory. It may have a fantastic Vangelis soundtrack. It may even star Derek Pringle, the former England all-rounder, in a cameo role, but the tale of the 1924 Olympic Games gets only the silver medal in your estimation.

There’s no shame in that. Colin Welland’s story is about two British athletes, a devout Scottish missionary and a Jewish student at Cambridge, the son of immigrants. Both compete for their dignity: Eric Liddell (Charleson) runs in the 400 metres to please his God after refusing to take part in the 100 metres when the heat is held on a Sunday; Harold Abrahams (Cross), his rival at the sprint, runs to prove his worth to the anti-Semites.

The film is unabashedly patriotic and class conscious, but this provides the spur for Abrahams to fight for acceptance. The prejudice is not just a question of birth or wealth, but of approach. One of the wonderful scenes is when Abrahams discusses what drives him with his college masters, who are appalled by his deviation from the amateur ethos. “You’ve hired a professional coach, you’ve adopted a professional attitude,” Lindsay Anderson says with scorn.

David Puttnam, the producer, is said to have been looking for a story in the fashion of A Man for All Seasons, about people putting conscience ahead of fame. He found the perfect peg when by chance thumbing through an Olympic reference book.

For a historical film, there seem to be remarkably few factual errors, although the character of Lord Lindsay is invented and Liddell knew long before the Games that the 100 metres would be on a Sunday. But that would have made a worse story. PATRICK KIDD

1. Raging Bull (1980) Boxing

I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss . . .

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent, Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, Mario Gallo, Frank Adonis, Joseph Bono, Frank Topham, Lori Anne Flax, Charles Scorsese, Don Dunphy, Bill Hanrahan, Rita Bennett
US
129min
B/W
Two Oscars

THE TIMES readers have spoken and Raging Bull is voted the greatest sports film of them all — an interesting choice given that many experts don’t even regard it as the greatest boxing film, according that accolade to either John Huston’s Fat City or Robert Rossen’s now sadly neglected Body and Soul.

But, sucking up though I may seem to be, I go along with the readers. Raging Bull is not just a great film about boxing; it is a great film by any standards. Many critics indeed regard it as the best movie of the 1980s and I’m not about to argue with them.

Its subject is Jake La Motta, a violent, almost monosyllabic kid from the Bronx, who became world middleweight champion in the 1940s. But if boxing is the hub around which it revolves, its true concern is the man himself rather than simply the prize-fighter and his exploits. Certainly his epic encounters with the peerless Sugar Ray Robinson and others are depicted in all their gory, primitive brutality but it is La Motta’s private life, especially his attitude towards women, that most interests the director, Scorsese, and his writers, Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin.

As portrayed, brilliantly, by De Niro, La Motta is a man of limited imagination and low self-esteem, seething with emotions that he cannot articulate. In his relationship with his wife Vickie (a remarkably mature performance by the 19-year-old Moriarty) those emotions, fuelled by sexual inadequacy and lack of comprehension, are mostly suspicion and jealousy, which he expresses in violence because he knows no other way.

He either beats her for sins real or imagined or, if she happens unwisely to suggest that she finds one of his opponents good-looking, batters the man’s face so frenziedly that, as an onlooker remarks: “He ain’t pretty no more.”

This is not, then, your familiar feel-good movie. If you’re looking for a happy Hollywood ending, look elsewhere, but if you’re after something that will thrill and excite you, stir your blood lust and at the same time make you think, particularly about the eternal complexity of the male-female relationship, this is not to be missed.

The coda is provided, many years after the championship-winning glory days, by a fat, long washed-up La Motta doing a sadly inadequate nightclub act. (De Niro, ever the earnest, dedicated Method actor, put on 60lbs in weight for this bit.) Whether what we are watching can be interpreted as an accurate biography is difficult to tell. But since La Motta lent his support and approval to the film it might be reasonable to assume that the screenplay was not too economical with the truth. In any event, what emerges is a vivid, sometimes shocking, sometimes poignant picture of a disturbed but remarkable man.

It is an unforgivable travesty that the 1981 Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture went not to Scorsese and Raging Bull but to Robert Redford and the very ordinary Ordinary People.

“I remember those cheers / They still ring in my ears / After years, they remain in my thoughts / Go to one night / I took off my robe, and what'd I do? I forgot to wear shorts / I recall every fall / Every hook, every jab / The worst way a guy can get rid of his flab / As you know, my life wasn't drab / Though I’d much . . . Though I'd rather hear you cheer / When you delve . . . Though I’d rather hear you cheer / When I delve into Shakespeare / “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse", I haven't had a winner in six months / Though I'm no Olivier / I would much rather . . . And though I'm no Olivier / If he fought Sugar Ray / He would say / That the thing ain't the ring, it's the play / So give me a . . . stage / Where this bull here can rage / And though I could fight / I'd much rather recite . . . that's entertainment” — Jake La Motta