Ovett refuses to work on film set to portray rivalry with Coe

By Steven Downes

STEVE Ovett has turned down the chance to work as a consultant on BBC's proposed film about his rivalry with double Olympic champion Sebastian Coe.

FIERCE RIVALS: Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe were part of Britain's glorious heyday of
middle distance running in the eighties (Getty Images)

The film, based on Pat Butcher's 2005 book The Perfect Distance about one of the great athletics rivalries of all-time, is going ahead despite one of the protagonists declining to co-operate with its making.

Ovett declined an approach from the film's producers to work on the project, which the BBC hopes to release ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.

Ovett, now 54 and living in Australia, suspects that any film, with a screenplay written by Hollywood-based screenwriter Will Davies, will play up the stereotypical differences between the cleancut Coe, who attended Loughborough University, while casting his younger self as the villain of the piece, an art school rebel who often raced in a blood-red Soviet vest.

"I heard about that and gave it the thumbs down from the start for obvious reasons," Ovett told national press agency Sportsbeat.

"After Chariots of Fire I think they would prefer everyone to still be wearing baggy shorts, and I can picture the intellectual, clean cut, perfect smile Seb up against 'working class boy'. It kinda sucks.

"I prefer to leave the past exactly where it is," said Ovett.

Ovett's "bad boy" image during his competitive career was cultivated by some senior sportswriters of that era because the Brighton runner refused to talk to them.

For the past 20 years, when he finished racing internationally, Ovett has worked in the media, as a sought-after and forthright television commentator.

Producers at AL Films approached Ovett last year, offering him a consultant role on the film, something which Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Olympics organising committee, has accepted.

Between 1978 and 1983, Coe and Ovett set 14 outdoor world records, at distances from 800 metres to two miles.

The pair constantly traded records as they rarely met in a race on the track, with the notable exception of the 1980 Olympic Games, where Ovett beat Coe to the 800m gold medal, and Coe came back to take the 1,500m title.