SYNOPSIS
The Flying Scotsman’, is the remarkable true story about the turbulent life of cyclist Graeme Obree, who built his own bike out of washing machine parts and rode it to gold at the world championships.
From a humble background, Graeme Obree (Jonny Lee-Miller) always had to fight for survival. As a grown man, nothing had changed and when his beloved bicycle shop went bust, Obree had neither the money nor the sponsorship necessary to realise his dream; to compete at the highest level of world cycling. But it was always clear from his passion for the sport that he was destined for greatness. He faced years of gruelling preparations, problems with funding, injuries and scandals, but with the unwavering support of his wife Anne (Laura Fraser) and the help of his close friend and newly-appointed manager Malky (Billy Boyd), he never gave up.
On the bike that he designed and built himself, Obree was able to adopt a new, more aerodynamic riding posture, shaving off those few crucial seconds from each lap around the velodrome. But the bicycle brought Obree into conflict with the World Cycling Federation, and far from praising his ingenuity, the board rewrote the rulebooks and would go to great lengths in order to stop him from competing.
Defiant, Obree refused to give up, He built another bike of radical design that squeezed through the WCF’s strict guidelines – and against all the odds he won the World Pursuit Championship – astonishingly beating his rival, the Olympic Gold Medal holder Chris Boardman. Graeme’s pioneering Superman Position’ remains one of the most defining images in the history of world cycling.