The Racer is based on a weird knot in Tour de France history. In 1998, the world’s most famous bike race held its initial stages (the Grand Départ in Tour parlance) in Ireland for the first time, amidst a widespread doping scandal that rocked the sport pre-Lance Armstrong. Kieron J. Walsh’s film takes this potentially engaging context and squanders it, finding some interesting texture around cycling procedures but syringing too much melodrama into the film’s system, rendering it a blunt, predictable sports flick.
Time and again the drama becomes overwrought.
The Racer centres on Dom Chabol (Louis Talpe), a legendary 38-year-old domestique, or pacesetter, for a world-beating team. Yet at the start of the competition, he is dumped for being over-the-hill, only to be immediately reinstated when the team falls foul of the increasingly widespread drug tests. The film is good on the minutiae of the cycling world, from the drug-laced blood transfusions initiated by team masseur Sonny (Iain Glen), to the practicalities of urinating mid-race, to some of the japery that goes on between team members. The toll on the riders’ physical and mental health is tangible.
Yet time and again the drama becomes overwrought. On top of all the cycling shenanigans, Walsh’s script also gives Dom an estranged sister to deal with, medical emergencies, a burgeoning romance with a young doctor (Tara Lee), who gives Dom a sense of what life might be like away from the bike, and clichéd anxiety dreams about the fear of losing. The filmmaking also never energises the cycling sequences, lacking the dynamism of, say, Peter Yates’ Breaking Away, some 40 years ago. Talpe is a strong presence but does little to render Dom’s internal life with much subtlety and detail. It’s this all-round lack of sophistication that renders The Racer an uphill slog.