Battle Mountain

Having already been played by Jonny Lee Miller in The Flying Scotsman (2006), intrepid cyclist-cum-inventor Graeme Obree is now the subject of Dave Street's documentary account of his daring bid to win the 2013 World Human-Powered Speed Challenge at Battle Mountain, Nevada. Since becoming individual pursuit world champion in the early 1990s, Obree has attempted suicide, been diagnosed with bipolarity and been divorced. However, 19-year-old son Jamie proves a key collaborator in the 48-year-old's attempt to set a record on a sleek prone contraption dubbed "The Beastie" by his pal Chris Hoy. As much an insight into Obree's engineering ingenuity as a celebration of his courage and sporting prowess, this switches between scenes of patient tinkering in a cramped kitchen to spectacular crashes on windswept airstrips before Obree makes his bid for glory. He is disarmingly frank about his travails, but the tone of this admiring, if stylistically unambitious profile, is often one of awed amusement as Obree overcomes problems with saucepans, aerodynamic casings and balance speeds to write his name in the record books.