Monday, December 02, 2019

MovieNotes: Eat.Race.Win

Wading my way through Amazon’s collection of sports documentary series, found this interesting one on Tour de France. But Eat.Race.Win breaks the embedded sports documentary format by focusing not just on a particular team but instead choosing to highlight the work done by its performance chef during the course of the race. So here we go into a 6-part series covering the nutrition aspects on 1 team in one racing tournament! Talk about a niche within a niche. 

The series is narrated from the point of view of Hannah Grant, who is the Head Chef for Team Orica Scott, an Australian based cycling team participating in the 2017 Tour de France. The team has nine riders (at the start) with their chief priority being to win the White Jersey (awarded to the best rider under the age of 26, who finishes within the Top-10 overall as well). Any stage wins are treated as a bonus. Simon Yates is the chosen contender from the team. And he achieves the objective. 

Meanwhile, Hannah Grant and her crew are tasked with feeding the riders and the support staff as they journey through the Tour. Every episode is a different culinary adventure as Hannah and her team visits the local farms and markets to get the best of French healthy taste for the team. 

The highlight of the series is the way it showcases what goes behind the scenes. The usual image of Tour de France is a big peloton of bikers racing across the French countryside with cars following them and spectators cheering them by the tracks. We get to see some of the dangers of road biking and also the team work of both the support staff and the fellow riders in creating the winner. Till I watched the series, never realized that riding is a team sport. Unlike F1, the lead identified rider has to get full support from his fellow riders to achieve the overall objective! And food as the fuel for the riders makes an interesting analogy. 

This certainly was an interesting one to watch giving a different perspective to something familiar.. 

Previously on MovieNotes: Six Dreams 

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