Catapult

Director/Producer Andrew Vial

Catapult is a film poem on the sport of polevaulting and features Olympic athlete Ray Boyd and Australian ex-champion Eddy Johnson.

Both vaulters are seen in top form as they outdo each other in their attempts to set a new Australian record. The film won many awards and was commercially successful. It was shot over a period of Olympic Pre-selection Trials.

Eddy Johnson is shown wearing a yellow singlet while Ray Boyd is shown wearing black and white with a magpie insignia on his chest. There is also a shot of a spectacular pole break, and here the vaulter is Ian Gawler, a decathlon champion who was vaulting on an unusually lightweight pole.

Although some of the jumps were record-breaking the intention of the film was not to present one record breaking jump after another but to explore the mental nature of the vaulters and compare the process of 'psyching up' of two champion athletes.