The 20 Best Sport Documentaries Ever - as chosen by you

The death of OJ Simpson has brought one of these films back into the public gaze, but how many of our list have you seen?

There’s a fascinating and illuminating blend of sports documentaries in the Top 20 list below, chosen by the readers and followers of Sporting Intelligence.

One of them is OJ: Made in America, which is in joint sixth place on the list. It is an astonishing piece of work, and is the longest film, at 467 minutes (albeit in five parts), ever to be nominated for an Academy Award, surpassing War and Peace in that regard. And yes, it won that Oscar, in 2017.

I was getting towards the end of a first draft of this piece yesterday afternoon (Thursday) when news broke that O. J. Simpson had died.

I tweeted about that, flagging up this piece, and the doc, and within minutes there was wave of responses about what a fabulous documentary this is.

My tweet (and therefore the replies and the quote tweets) is here.

And this is the documentary that came joint sixth in our list!

On Wednesday I analysed the data at the heart of the sports documentary explosion - and worked out the big winners and losers. The only way you can read all of that post - and every investigative series - is to become a paid subscriber.

I also asked Sporting Intelligence’s Substack subscribers and social followers to nominate their own favourite sports docs.

The voters reflect a particular demographic: smart, engaged people who seek smart and engaging content, while of course wanting to be entertained, gripped or moved, or all three.

The fact that seven of the top 20 have football (soccer) as a key component is partly down to the geographical make-up of the SI audience (47% of the millions of readers and followers of www.sportingintelligence.com over the years are from the UK).

The SI Substack audience, built since January 22 this year, is already diverse too, geographically and in interests. There are two docs on our list on the subject of Formula 1 docs, and two on each of basketball, climbing and rugby union. The Olympics, or rather the corruption of an Olympics also features, as do boxing, NFL, cycling and ice-hockey.

More than 60 other documentaries garnered votes: skateboarding and free-diving, baseball, chess, netball, MMA, cricket, roller blading, skiing, motorcycling, snooker, race walking and tennis were all in there.

Four of our top 20 have won an Oscar for Best Documentary, while others have won BAFTAs, Emmys or other industry awards.

There are six docs in the top 20 I have never seen, but I will certainly be seeking them out in the coming weeks. Few of the top 20 are recent streaming series (multiple-parters from Netflix, Amazon and so on), and most representatives of that category are lower down the list. 

A majority of the top 20 are single films. Four of those are available free and in full on YouTube and you’ll find those linked as you go along. A full summary of the top 20 follows below, but first, the Top 5 in detail.

No.1 Senna

Year: 2010

Sport: F1

Director: Asif Kapadia

Accolades: Two BAFTAs including best documentary, plus major festival awards. More info. Trailer.

This film tracks the extraordinary life and death of Brazilian motor-racing superstar Ayrton Senna, from his entry into F1 in 1984 to his untimely end a decade later, via a rollercoaster rivalry with Alain Prost and a mission to make his sport safer.

Reader Andrew Herd said: “Senna was excellent, with a lot of footage from the period, lots of interviews from the people involved and told the story, good and bad.”

No.2 The Last Dance

Year: 2020

Sport: Basketball

Director: Jason Hehir

Accolades: Creative Arts Emmy and more. More info. Trailer. On Netflix.

With Michael Jordan’s career at the heart of it, the particular focus of this 10-part series is the 1997-98 season, Jordan’s last with the Bulls. The show features interviews with no fewer than 90 key people, including all Jordan’s closest team-mates. Vital to the vibe is never-seen-before footage, collected by a film crew that had an all-access pass to the Bulls.

As reader Resh said: “Not a basketball fan, but The Last Dance was brilliant!” Michael Greenwood wrote: “The Last Dance set the bar for a sporting doc series.”

John Bailey described it as “fascinating” while Beth Limb wrote: “From a storytelling aspect, I loved The Last Dance.” Paul Tomkins said: “Enjoyed The Last Dance even though I don't really like basketball.”

No.3= An Impossible Job

Year: 1994

Sport: Football

Director: Ken McGil

Accolade: Royal Television Society, Best Sports Coverage. More info.

“Do I not like that?” is the sentence that most viewers will remember from this film, which followed the England football team and their manager Graham Taylor as England failed to qualify for the 1994 Word Cup. The whole thing is available free (below) on YouTube.

Swiss Ramble said: “An awful World Cup qualification campaign for England, but horribly compelling.” Reader Jon said: “No acting, no playing up to the cameras, unprecedented access and brutally honest. So many classic moments.”

Will H wrote: “It shows a superb human being, slowly tortured by the press and the decision-making of others. He wasn’t the right fit for the national team, and this in its own way proves that. But it does show what a genuinely nice man he was.”

MC Gilbert said: “This will always be the best documentary for me … All the best ones have some form of jeopardy or failure in them - the modern trend of in-house sanitised success stories don’t really work.”

No3= Diego Maradona

Year: 2019

Sport: Football

Director: Asif Kapadia

Accolades: Wide critical acclaim. More info. Trailer.

The life of Maradona, one of the greatest footballers of all time, in all its glory, and failings. Sarah Edwards was among readers who found it “amazing”. Simon Hopper wrote: “Maradona was a force of nature and a God in Naples. He lived the life and then some, and this captures the craziness in which he existed.”

No3= Icarus

Year: 2017

Sport: The corruption of the 2014 Sochi Olympics

Director: Bryan Fogel

Accolades: Oscar and more. More info. Trailer. On Netflix.

The Oscar-winning Icarus, about the Russian state-sponsored doping plot that I first revealed to the world in 2013, was watched on Netflix in the first half of last year by half a million people, six years after its release.

Below is a summary graphic of the top 20 sports documentaries as voted for by readers. The other Oscar winners are When We Were Kings, OJ: Made in America and Free Solo.

Living With Lions, The Four Year Plan and Red Army are all available in full, and free, on YouTube. Click the titles in this paragraph to watch those.

Moving to the docs just outside the top 5, When We Were Kings is the story of the Rumble in the Jungle.

The Two Escobars is about the tragic intersection of a Colombian footballer and a namesake who was once the world’s richest and most prolific drug dealer. 

Hoop Dreams is a 1994 film about two high school students from Chicago following their dreams of becoming NBA players, in challenging circumstances. 

At random now, some of the many other comments and observations on sports documentaries that made it into our top 20, or didn’t but were admired anyway.

Martin English wrote: “Something a bit more niche is TT Closer to The Edge from 2011, about the Isle of Man TT races. Worth watching, if only for the piece to camera by Bridget Dobbs, widow of Paul Dobbs and mother of their two children. Paul died during the 2010 races.

JP wrote: “My favourite is Slaying the Badger. It is a great story but the way it is told with interviews with all the main players (LeMond, Hinault, the sporting director) all with differing recollections of the deal done on the 1985 Tour De France is fantastic.”

That film is based on the book by the late Richard Moore.

Swiss Ramble, in addition to An Impossible Job, recommended Orient: a club for a fiver .. “if only for John Sitton’s half-time team talk (“and you can bring your dinner”); and I Believe in Miracles (“Cloughy at his best”); and Sunderland ‘Til I Die, not least because of the theme tune.

Jacbob Sutton recommended the “great” Strokes of Genius. I had the honour to be courtside at the 2008 Wimbledon men’s final between Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, the subject of this doc, and having been at Wimbledon every single day of every tournament from 1999 to 2016, I can say it was the greatest tennis match SW19 has seen, and very high in the list of best ever, anywhere. But that’s a different article.

Sarah wrote: “It is so hard to pick a favorite, but June 17, 1994 (another OJ film) and Requiem for the Big East (one of many 30 for 30 recs) are at the top of my list.”

Richard Conway wrote: “My dad bought me 16 days of Glory about LA 84. I would have been 7 or 8 at the time. Looking back I think it’s what got me interested in sport. I must have worn the tape out watching Carl Lewis, Daley Thompson, Ed Moses and their stories over and over again.”

Hilary Evans said: “Topical because of last weekend's race but I love A Sunday in Hell on the 1976 Paris-Roubaix cycling.”

As for bad docs, Jacob wrote: “The worst ones, by a mile, are the Amazon football ones. They're so inauthentic, whether it be creating jeopardy when there is none (City) or using fake crowd noise (Leeds). You can tell that the clubs had a lot of control (which I do get). But it makes for terrible content.”

But back to good ones. Jane Smith says: “I’m not sure where you’d find it, but Chasing the Sun about the Springboks win in the 2019 Rugby World Cup is unashamedly my fave sports docu. It not only focused on rugby but also the huge disparities within SA society as a result of apartheid. So worth it if you can find it.

I appreciate we’ve barely scratched the surface on this topic, but by all means leave further recommendations in the comments, and share your views on whether our top 20 is a decent crop, or missing a must-have film you’d like to see included.

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