Linford, review: Britain’s sprint superstar struggles to outrun the allegations

Linford Christie’s garlanded athletics career was overshadowed by doping allegations that even this documentary can’t avoid

Hot on the heels of the BBC’s Daley Thompson documentary comes another examination of a vintage British athletics star. Linford (BBC One) is a study of Linford Christie, the only runner in history to hold the Commonwealth, European, Olympic and World Championship titles at the same time. 
Thompson was a complicated character who sometimes ran into controversy but remains beloved. Christie was a complicated character who sometimes ran into controversy but does not command the same level of affection. Why the difference? Well, Thompson had a cheekier and more relaxed demeanour – try to picture him back in the 1980s, and it will be with a smile on his face. But the main issue is the doping allegations that dogged Christie for years despite his vehement denials. 
In this documentary, Christie confronts those allegations once again and continues to maintain his innocence. He tells us that he has suffered for 25 years, since testing positive for nandrolone during what was essentially a fun run while he briefly came out of retirement (he had been cleared at the 1988 Seoul Olympics after testing positive for another drug, arguing that he had unwittingly drunk it in ginseng tea). 
His children and his former partner also discuss the toll that the allegations have taken on him. His ex says: “It totally destroyed everything he stood for and everything he did.” Director Kwabena Oppong followed the now-standard, serious-documentary format: film the subject sitting down on a chair in the middle of a studio at the beginning, then cut between that interview, contributions from others, and archive news footage. 
The archive offered the chance to relive Christie’s 100m races, to marvel at his power and admire his pre-race cool (the “mask of concentration”, as described by David Coleman). And then there was the other, trickier stuff: Christie’s unhappiness with negative press attention, and his anger at the gags about “Linford’s Lunchbox”. A man from The Sun said it was all harmless fun, but Christie didn’t think so then and doesn’t think so now, believing that it was a racial stereotype which distracted from his achievements. 
In an uncomfortable clip from Saint and Greavsie, Jimmy Greaves told him, stupidly: “Well, why do you wear the shorts then?” Christie seems less prickly now than he sometimes appeared during his running career, but still with a sense of injustice. 
I don’t know whether the film will change your mind about the doping allegations, but it is at its most absorbing when it takes us back to the track, and Christie’s mindset in the moments before a race, sizing up the opposition. “You walk past a guy… if he puts his head down, you know that you’ve got it because he’s afraid. Then you walk out into the stadium, you get adrenaline, your heart beats…” Then Christie ran, and he was majestic.
Linford is on BBC One tonight at 8.30pm; and available on BBC iPlayer now