Lionel

In 1968, the world-champion Aboriginal boxer Lionel Rose was embraced by his countrymen (a 250,000-strong ticker-tape parade); honoured by his government (the Australian of the Year); courted by global megastars (an audience with The King, Elvis Presley). Yet, forty years ago, Rose wasn’t eligible to vote. But it was youth, and not race, that disenfranchised the twenty-year-old. Apolitical, Lionel is a cautionary tale that follows on from the back-page scandals of this winter ‘ a young athlete with supreme gifts unable to parry publicity demands and greedy hangers-on. Bankruptcy and disgrace followed Rose’s premature retirement, just two years after his annus mirabilis. Director Eddie Martin misses an opportunity, perhaps the last given Rose’s deteriorating health, to examine the boxer’s protracted decline and fall. The Australian sporting myth is shattered, with comprehensive and neatly compiled archival footage of yesteryear triumphs set against Rose’s present-day meanderings, but the story of Lionel Rose is left incomplete. (Carlin Hurdis)