Queer athletes with Olympic dreams received an early spotlight in 1982’s ‘Personal Best’

Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, in the spirit of the Olympics, we’re revisiting 1982’s sapphic sports classic Personal Best.

Happy 2024 Olympics! As we continue to ignore our work duties and focus all of our attention on the world’s best competing for medals—especially in a year with more LGBTQ+ representation (and controversies) than ever—this week we’ll look back at a film that centered the Olympic dreams of young athletes at a time when identity proved to be their biggest hurdle.

There’s a long and complicated history of LGBTQ+ people in the Olympic games, and in professional sports in general. Although now we can root for plenty of out athletes competing, earning medals, and setting records around the globe, the sports world has historically been one of tradition and oppression. From strict gender binaries and discriminatory systems, it’s taken decades for queer athletes to become as visible as they are today, with a lot more road to keep carving ahead.

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It’s calculated that only about 140 openly LGBTQ+ athletes competed in the Olympics prior to 2000, a time when living an openly queer life wasn’t nearly as feasible as it is today.

History makers like Greg Louganis and Billie Jean King suffered tremendous backlash in their primes, which arguably eclipsed many of their successes. And these are examples of those who managed to make it to the world stage—what about all the other athletes whose dreams came just short of that?

The Set-Up

1982’s Personal Best, written and directed by Robert Towne—whose revered screenplay for Chinatown earned him an Oscar in 1974—follows the story of two young track-and-field athletes, Chris and Tory (Mariel Hemingway and real-life athlete Patrice Donnelly) trying to earn their place in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The two fall in love and start a tumultuous relationship, often interfered and manipulated by their coach (Scott Glenn), only to realize that their affection for each other may actually be hindering their performance.

The film is a combination of a coming-of-age narrative and a sports movie, with subtle elements of psychological drama that very clearly inspired later movies about the much more extreme tolls of athletic performance like The Wrestler and Black Swan. It quite effectively threads in elements of a relationship drama with the underdog story of two young athletes trying to achieve their dreams. Although, somewhat mystifyingly, it uses the less exciting aspects of both to weave into the story.

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Staying On Track

Hamingway’s Chris is a young runner new to the scene who is constantly being asked to push her limits, both physically and emotionally, by the two mentor figures: Tory (Donnelly), the older girl with more experience in matters of the heart, and their coach Terry (Glenn), who uses her fears and insecurities to fuel paranoia in her. It’s almost certainly intentional that these two have similar sounding names.

Chris is a lost young woman, desperately trying to escape her repressive household, holding onto anything and anyone that offers her a way out, whether through a romance or a chance to compete in the Olympics.

As Chris and Tory try to balance their relationship with the demands of the trials, they begin to realize that they may not be achieving their full potential because of it. As the coach tells Chris at one point, “I don’t know what you’re more afraid of: That Tory will beat you, or that you’ll beat her.” The two eventually decide to break up, and Chris moves on to a male swimmer (Kenny Moore) who gives her the pure encouragement and support that she never had from Tory.

And *spoiler* it all ends in a very anticlimactic moment that defies all the tropes of the genre: Although they make the Olympic team, they’re ultimately unable to attend because of the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics, bringing this story to a grim, final note about the blind pursuit of a goal.

Ahead Of The Curve

Although Chris and Tory’s relationship—and the emotional strains it brings—is a pivotal obstacle for the characters, it’s more a statement on how “real life” can interfere with athletic performance, rather than an examination of the hardships of being a queer athlete.

Their sexuality is an important trait, but they never face any direct discrimination or rejection because of it. And while it’s a unique and somewhat refreshing approach to the narrative of queer athletes, it’s a bit baffling the point is otherwise left unaddressed or unexplored, especially in the 1980s. There’s a sense of dare and danger just in the portrayal of these young women falling in love, though the film could just as easily swap them out for straight couple, and the film would remain the same, thematically and narratively.

Not Quite Medal-Worthy

However, the biggest misstep of the movie is that it makes these dynamics—which on paper seem exciting and full of inherent drama—feel quite bland. Chris and Tory fall in love because the story tells them to, but the passion and yearning that they are feeling for each other isn’t really palpable. As a viewer, you also don’t really get a sense of the limits they’re pushing their bodies to, apart from a brief accident jumping over a vault. Even the stakes of earning a place at the Olympics feel like an abstract goal rather than an “escape route” from their daily lives or a pathway to greater glory.

Personal Best should feel like an Olympic sprint, but winds up being more like a stroll around the park. Although a unique entry in both the queer film and sports drama canon, you’re more likely to get your blood pumping by tuning into one of the many Olympic broadcasts this summer.

Personal Best is available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon Prime Video & Apple TV.

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