Posted: July 25, 2004

Olympics: CBC Television's Countdown to the Olympics

From Canada.com:

Let the games begin. And the documentaries, too. Next Wednesday is the kickoff of CBC-TV's countdown to the 2004 Athens Olympics with the first of five documentaries.

Ancient Olympics is an hour-long look at the Olympiad of 448 BC, when the games were already more than 300 years old. The competitions included chariot racing, running, jumping, discus, javelin and boxing. Through re-enactments and computer-generated imagery, viewers will witness the beginning of corruption of the Olympic ideal.

Throughout August, both the main CBC network and Newsworld will carry High Performance (a two-parter that looks at performance-enhancing drugs), Athens Through the Hoops (a Greek filmmaker's look at preparations for the Athens Games), Champions of Olympia (another two-part doc in which athletes re-enact the competitions that first took place more than 2000 years ago) and Dope: Scientists and Sleuths Battle for the Soul of Sport (a forensics-based look at U.S. drug-detection masterminds).

Check out the CBC website at: www.cbc.ca.