26 Times in a Row

This short documentary revisits the 1976 Olympic Marathon. A modern-day addition to the Games, the marathon commemorates the soldier who ran cross-country, in 490 B.C., to announce the Greek victory at Marathon and then died. Here, great film footage of the 1976 Summer Olympics captures the physical demands of the race, while its emotional counterpart is related by Waldemar Cierpinski, the event’s 1976 gold medalist. This emotion-charged film proves that although the winner of the Decathlon is the best all-round athlete, the “toughest” is the winner of the Marathon.