Original title: Sport : le revers de la médaille

English title: The Harder they Fall
90 minutes

Broadcaster 

Arte France/Germany

Coproducers 

Arte France, Yuzu Productions, Découpages
 

Directors 

Xavier Deleu and Yonathan Kellerman

Date of first broadcast 

June 10, 2014

Story
In the 21st century, sports are legion. A multibillion-dollar industry fed by television rights, sportswear sales, fashion subcultures, and video games: today’s athletes are the icons of an expanding economic force.
A force fuelled by a well-oiled grinding machine, where athletes are constantly being pushed to unfathomable limits. Today’s sportsmen and women must deliver more goals, faster times, harder hits, sharper tackles… and play longer seasons, added tournaments while heeding to the public’s insatiable lust for greater performances. And they are having an increasingly hard time keeping up with it all.
After they retire, many athletes are broken. When cyclists feel obliged to dope, when hockey players start committing suicide, and when football players lose their minds to dementia, there comes a time to ask ourselves: has professional sport gone too far?

Cast
Serge Betsen, Marion Bartoli, Colin Jackson, Christine Arron, Laurent Brochard, Jean-Pierre Papin, Gennaro Gattuso, Kyle Turley, Jutta Gottschalk-Groll, Corina Gottschalk, Maurizio Vasino, Gianluca De Ponti, Giovanni Ziviani, Aya Cissoko, Antonio Rossi, Brad Hopkins, Perdita Felicien, Chantal Petitclerc, Ines Geipel, Christian Schenk, Henning Fritz, Derek Redmond, Harry Carson, Andreas Krieger
and
Christiane Ayotte, Perikles Simon, Dario D’Ottavio, Massimiliano Castellani, Jean-François Bourg, Claire Carrier, Lili-Naz Hazrati.