Bob Bowman, Vinnie Jones and a mixed match lead this week’s sport documentaries | OneFootball

L'Équipe highlights three sport documentaries to catch this week, spanning elite swimming, football’s hardman myth and a fresh take on mixed football.

On the L'Équipe platform, L'Équipe Explore Bob Bowman, le magicien d'eau profiles the 61-year-old American coach who has shaped champions from Michael Phelps to Léon Marchand, whom he has coached since summer 2021. Directed by Jean-Baptiste Renet, it follows Bowman in Austin, Texas, where he currently oversees nine Olympic medallists.

The film traces his demanding yet teasing rapport with swimmers, with Phelps reflecting on that extreme rigour and Marchand noting how Bowman pushes athletes beyond what they thought possible. The coach opens his training notebooks with daunting targets, reveals a taste for classical music and leans on dry humour, invoking Benjamin Franklin’s line about deeds over words before joking that his own motto is simply to be quiet and follow instructions.

Netflix’s L'envers du sport: Vinnie Jones runs one hour 17 minutes and leans into the intimidation, from crunching tackles to full-throated tirades. The former labourer who rose with Wimbledon embraced his 80s and 90s bad-boy persona, and knows that image boosted his fame.

Foot mixte : le match du XXIe siècle, by Isabelle Curet and available on YouTube and Humanite.fr, looks to mixed football, nodding to the Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs tennis match 53 years ago. With a sociological bent, it notes that teenage girls are twice as likely to drop sport, and recounts club refusals, from PSG to Barça, that steered Curet toward the 470 dinghy, mixed since 2024, for a rewarding sailing experiment.

Source: L'Équipe