Greatest Sports Documentaries of All Time

Truth is more incredible than fiction when it comes to the greatest sports documentaries ever made.

Greatest Sports Documentaries of All Time

We are in the golden age of sports documentaries — a time when the genre is being looked at in ways filmmakers could have never imagined before.

Since 2010, four sports documentaries have won Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature, and with streaming services at the fingertips of all of us it's much easier to see sports documentaries whenever you want to.

Here’s a look at the greatest sports documentaries of all time.

Honorable Mention: Muse

Year released: 2015

Director: Gotham Chopra

Award highlights: None

Bottom line: The late Kobe Bryant did things on a basketball court that defied the imagination, and while this documentary showcases the different stages of the career, it is his intellect and knowledge of the game that shines through.

Even the harshest critics of Bryant will have to begrudgingly give him credit for at least one thing after watching this — he was as mentally tough as they come.

30. Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team

Year released: 2005

Writer: Ouisie Shapiro

Award highlights: None

Bottom line: The greatest women’s sporting event in history was arguably the 1999 Women’s World Cup, where the U.S. won the championship on a dramatic goal by Brandi Chastain.

This documentary takes you into the heart of that team and shows you what led up to the moment where the American squad embedded itself into our collective sports memories.

29. Tyson

Year released: 2008

Director: James Toback

Awards highlights: Cannes Film Festival (winner/Regard Knockout Award), National Society of Film Critics Awards (nominee/Best Non-Fiction Film), New York Film Critics Circle Awards (nominee/Best Non-Fiction Film)

Bottom line: Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who was convicted of rape in 1990, gets to sit down and tell his life story, leaving nothing out. The audience is left to ask themselves whether or not they feel any sympathy for him.

And with our knowledge of the sexual harassment accusations against James Toback that have come out since the film's release, we also need to question his motivation as director.

28. Unmatched

Martina Navratilova, right, is congratulated at the net by Chris Evert Lloyd.

Year released: 2010

Directors: Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern

Award highlights: None

Bottom line: There aren’t a lot of frills to Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern’s look at the friendship between two of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Just Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, telling that story to each other, warts and all, interspersed with tennis footage.

The story of friendship that emerges — one that spans decades and continents — is something to behold.

27. Riding Giants

Year released: 2004

Director: Stacy Peralta

Award highlights: Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association (nominee/Best Documentary), American Cinema Awards (winner/Best Documentary Editing), AARP Film Awards (nominee/Best Documentary)

Bottom line: Stacy Peralta, who directed the seminal skateboarding documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys," struck gold again with his look at big-wave surfers that ended up being the first documentary ever screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

Laird Hamilton, who brought the technique of tow-in surfing to the masses, steals the show with his record-breaking set in Tahiti in 2000.

26. Free Solo

Jimmy Chin, Alex Honnold, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Year released: 2018

Directors: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin

Award highlights: Academy Awards (winner/Best Documentary Feature), BAFTA Awards (winner/Best Documentary), Toronto International Film Festival (winner/People’s Choice Documentary)

Bottom line: Alex Honnold wanted to become the first person to free solo climb Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan — a sport where the climber uses no ropes, harnesses or other protective equipment.

The fascinating part begins when we start to explore Honnold’s psyche. Why would he attempt a climb where one mistake results in death?

25. I Hate Christian Laettner

Year released: 2015

Director: Rory Karpf

Award highlights: None

Bottom line: Christian Laettner as he carved out a career in the late 1980s, early 1990s as one of the greatest college basketball players of all time.

People who weren’t following college basketball then can watch this documentary and fully understand the vitriol directed toward Duke and him.

That Laettner is so willing to explore the same topics, particularly his perceived villainy, is what makes this documentary so much fun.

24. Dogtown and Z-Boys

Year released: 2001

Director: Stacy Peralta

Award highlights: Sundance Film Festival (winner/Audience Award, winner/Directing Award), Independent Spirit Awards (winner/Best Documentary)

Bottom line: The film is narrated by Sean Penn, and you can almost smell the Pacific Ocean as our teenage heroes decide to toss aside their surfboards (for a bit) and invent a sport, make millions of dollars and change the world.

Stacy Peralta tells the tragedy and the triumph of the Zephyr skateboard team with the passion of someone who lived it, which he did.

23. Of Miracles and Men

Year released: 2015

Director: Jonathan Hock

Award highlights: Emmy Awards (winner/Outstanding Long Sports Documentary)

Bottom line: Americans know the "Miracle on Ice" from one perspective — the winning side of the U.S. men’s hockey team’s shocking upset of the Soviet Union on the way to gold at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York

This documentary looks at things from the perspective of the Russian team, where winning a hockey game also could mean winning freedom from Communist rule.

Can you say powerful?

22. Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story

Year released: 2014

Director: Alex Holmes

Award highlights: Royal Television Society (winner/Best Documentary Editing)

Bottom line: This gut-wrenching documentary shines a light on the lengths to which Lance Armstrong was willing to go to further his career and hide his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

He had no hesitation to ruin the lives of people — friends or foe — who could expose his lies.

There are few greater villains in the history of sports than Armstrong.

21. The Endless Summer

Year released: 1966

Director: Bruce Brown

Award highlights: National Film Registry (2002)

Bottom line: Rejected by all the Hollywood studios, Bruce Brown took his movie about two surfers chasing endless waves across the globe to Wichita, Kansas, where it showed for two straight weeks to sold-out audiences.

He went to New York and rented a theater, where he played the film for the next year and turned surfing into a worldwide phenomenon.

The rest is history for this cult classic, still the best surfing movie ever made.

20. The Eagle Huntress

Tom Bernard, Nurgaiv Rys, Aisholpan, Otto Bell, Daisy Ridley

Year released: 2016

Director: Otto Bell

Award highlights: BAFTA Awards (nominee/Best Documentary), Satellite Awards (nominee/Best Documentary), PGA Awards (nominee/Best Documentary Producers)

Bottom line: The tale of 13-year-old Kazakh girl Aisholpan’s dream to become an eagle hunter and the first woman to compete in the Golden Eagle Festival plays as good as any sports movie you’ll ever find.

The film is narrated by Star Wars star Daisy Ridley, and you’ll be cheering for Aisholpan from the jump.

Quick fact: The Eagle hunting community isn’t very welcoming to females.

19. Keepers of the Game

Year released: 2016

Director: Judd Ehrlich

Award highlights: Cannes Film Festival (winner/Bronze Lion), Critics Choice Awards (nominee/Best Documentary), Emmy Awards (nominee/Best Sports Documentary)

Bottom line: The girls' lacrosse team out of the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory struggle, scrap, claw and fight for every inch of respect they can get in the face of racism, an ambivalent attitude from their tribe and a nonexistent budget for the sport that was invented by their tribe.

Despite all of these obstacles, they thrive and win.

Bring the tissues.

18. Murderball

Year released: 2005

Director: Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro

Award highlights: Academy Awards (nominee/Best Documentary Feature), Sundance Film Festival (winner/Best Documentary Feature), British Film Institute Awards (winner/Best Documentary)

Bottom line: Wheelchair rugby, aka murderball, and the leadup to the match between the U.S. and Canadian teams at the 2004 Paralympics is the connecting thread, but the real drama comes when we introduce the players and dig into their lives.

Their exteriors are tough — like the sport they play — but when their vulnerabilities start to come through, the payoff is one of the more entertaining sports documentaries of all time.

17. The U

Years released: 2009

Director: Billy Corben

Award highlights: None

Bottom line: The University of Miami created one of the greatest college football dynasties of all time on the backs of renegade coaches and players, with the best of them pulled from Miami’s toughest neighborhoods.

Billy Corben, who also made the masterful documentaries "Cocaine Cowboys" and "Broke," directed this movie and its sequel in 2014.

For the Hurricanes, the rise is always as epic as the fall, which makes this story so compelling.

16. The Battered Bastards of Baseball

Year released: 2014

Director: Chapman Way and Maclain Way

Producer: Juliana Lembi

Production company: Netflix

Award highlights: New York Daily News (Top 10 Films of 2014)

Bottom line: Actor Bing Russell shook up every level of baseball when he bought the unaffiliated, Class-A Portland Mavericks and turned them into a winner in the mid-1970s.

Kurt Russell, Bing’s son, was one of the Mavs' stars for a few years. Oscar-Nominee director Todd Field ("Little Children") was their batboy.

Oh, and Big League Chew was invented in their dugout.

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15. Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals

Year released: 2010

Director: Ezra Edelman

Award highlights: Peabody Award (2011)

Bottom line: Ezra Edelman, who went on to win an Academy Award for "O.J.: Made in America" in 2017, is deft in creating the portrait of two stars who changed the NBA.

Based mostly on Jackie McMullan’s book, "When the Game Was Ours," the lives, careers and ultimately close friendship of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are gripping from start to finish.

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14. Unguarded

Year released: 2011

Director: Jonathan Hock

Award highlights: Emmy Awards (nominee/Outstanding Sports Documentary, nominee/Outstanding Editing)

Bottom line: Chris Herren, a basketball prodigy out of tough-as-hell Fall River, Massachusetts, was a star on several of Jerry Tarkanian’s Fresno State teams and played in the NBA before his descent into drug addiction.

The raw, no-holds-barred approach of this film puts you right next to Herren and the people he hurt the most.

And it will gut you.

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13. When We Were Kings

George Foreman, Will Smith, Muhammad Ali

Year released: 1996

Director: Leon Gast

Award highlights: Academy Awards (winner/Best Documentary Feature), Sundance Film Festival (winner/Special Jury Award), New York Film Critics Awards (winner/Best Non-Fiction Film)

Bottom line: "When We Were Kings" is considered the greatest boxing documentary — for good reason. Leon Gast reportedly spent 22 years editing, financing and filming before the finished product was ready.

With the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire as the backdrop, the film focuses as much on the political and social aspects of the fight as the fight itself.

And it works.

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12. Fantastic Lies

Year released: 2016

Director: Marina Zenovich

Award highlights: Critics Choice Documentary Awards (nominee/Best TV Documentary, nominee/Best Sports Documentary), SXSW Film Festival (nominee/Best Director)

Bottom line: The documentary about false rape accusations leveled against members of the Duke lacrosse team premiered 10 years to the day of the incident.

The real hero is team captain David Evans, who turned the case on its head once he was falsely accused.

The villain is district attorney Mike Nifong, who ignored evidence proving the players' innocence and proceeded with the case.

11. Pumping Iron

Year released: 1977

Directors: George Butler and Robert Fiore

Award highlights: Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards (Best Documentary)

Bottom line: This documentary, which stayed in the can for two years because the filmmakers ran out of money, turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into the huge movie star he would become throughout the 1980s.

The battle for the 1975 Mr. Universe title is the backdrop, but the personalities of the weightlifters are the real draw, including future "Incredible Hulk" star Lou Ferrigno.

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10. Undefeated

Rich Middlemas, left, TJ Martin, center, and Daniel Lindsay

Year released: 2011

Directors: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin

Award highlights: Academy Awards (winner/Best Documentary Feature)

Bottom line: Lumber salesman-turned-football coach Bill Courtney is at the heart of this documentary, as he tries to guide perennial Memphis, Tennessee, high school football doormat Manassas High to the first playoff win in school history.

One of the Oscar-winning film’s directors, T.J. Martin, went on to helm the Emmy Award-winning documentary "LA 92" about the Los Angeles riots.

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9. Touching the Void

Year released: 2003

Director: Kevin MacDonald

Award highlights: BAFTA Awards (winner/Best British Film), Seattle Film Critics Awards (winner/Best Documentary), Boston Society of Film Critics Awards (nominee/Best Documentary)

Bottom line: You’ll be a cold, sweaty mess at the end of this film, which depicts the harrowing journey of two mountain climbers up the west face of previously unbeaten Siula Grande in Peru.

If you think it’s scary on the way up, you won’t believe what it’ll be like when one of the climbers makes the heartbreaking decision to abandon the other injured climber in a snowstorm on the way down.

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8. Hoop Dreams

Year released: 1994

Director: Steve James

Award highlights: Academy Awards (nominee/Best Film Editing), National Society of Film Critics (winner/Best Documentary), Sundance Film Festival (winner/Best Documentary)

Bottom line: Steve James and his team originally envisioned "Hoop Dreams" as a 30-minute documentary for PBS.

They emerged almost eight years later with over 250 hours of footage that traced the epic stories of two inner-city Chicago basketball hopefuls, Arthur Agee and William Gates, and their fight to rise above poverty and make it all the way to the NBA.

7. Hillsborough

Year released: 2014

Director: Daniel Gordon

Award highlights: None

Bottom line: Daniel Gordon does a masterful job of telling the story of the 1989 soccer tragedy that took the lives of 96 fans who were trampled and crushed to death.

Where Gordon is really skilled is explaining the police ineptitude before, during and after the tragedy, but wait and feel your blood boil as we’re walked through the ensuing, decades-long cover-up.

6. One Day in September

Year released: 1999

Director: Kevin MacDonald

Producers: John Battsek, Arthur Cohn and Andrew Ruhemann

Production company: BBC Films and Passion Pictures

Award highlights: Academy Awards (winner/Best Documentary Feature),

Bottom line: Kevin MacDonald’s first full-length documentary was about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and it immediately entered the conversation as one of the greatest documentaries of all time.

MacDonald came under criticism for his use of graphic photos of the victims. He also managed to land an interview with the last known surviving terrorist, Jamal al-Gashey.

5. Beyond the Mat

Year released: 1999

Director: Barry W. Blaustein

Award highlights: Cinequest Film Festival (winner/Best Documentary), Director’s Guild Association (winner/Best Documentary, winner/Best Director)

Bottom line: Barry W. Blaustein doesn’t offer insight. He just lets the tape roll.

None of the stories are more compelling (and heartbreaking) than Jake "The Snake" Roberts, one of the most popular pro wrestlers from the 1980s, plying his trade in small-town venues and battling a nasty crack cocaine addiction.

WWE owner Vince McMahon, who participated in filming early on, unsuccessfully fought the release of the movie.

4. The Heart of the Game

Year released: 2005

Director: Ward Serrill

Award highlights: WGA Awards (nominee/Best Documentary), St. Louis Film Critics Association (nominee/Best Documentary), Black Reel Awards (nominee/Best Documentary)

Bottom line: Ward Serrill’s ambitious undertaking included spending six seasons with the Roosevelt High girls basketball team in Seattle, with most of the focus on the team’s coach, Bill Resler, and star player Darnellia Russell.

Serrill pulls all the heartstrings here and makes it almost impossible to not root for Roosevelt.

But that’s OK. Just means you still have a pulse.

3. Icarus

Year released: 2017

Director: Bryan Fogel

Award highlights: Academy Awards (winner/Best Documentary Feature), Sundance Film Festival (winner/Special Jury Award for Documentary)

Bottom line: The premise seems innocent enough — show the world that the banned drugs athletes take are making it too easy to evade drug tests.

The final product ended up being an international thriller, which blew the roof off state-run Russian doping in the Olympics, put a Russian doctor into a witness protection program and sent two of his associates to their graves.

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2. The Last Dance

Year released: 2020

Director: Jason Hehir

Award highlights: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series (2021)

Bottom line: Released to critical acclaim in May 2020, "The Last Dance" depicted Michael Jordan's final season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997-98 interspersed with the entire story of his career leading up to that point — pure basketball viewing heaven.

Jordan's battle for sports greatness and his relationships with his teammates, coaches and opponents became the talking point of the entire pandemic. That Jordan held onto the footage for over 20 years before sharing it with the public shows he knew exactly what kind of a hand he knew he was holding.

1. O.J.: Made in America

O.J. Simpson, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian, Robert Shapiro

Year released: 2016

Director: Ezra Edelman

Awards highlights: Academy Award (winner/Best Documentary Feature), Independent Spirit Awards (winner/Best Documentary Feature), MTV Movie & TV Awards (winner/Best Documentary)

Bottom line: The longest film to ever win an Academy Award (sorry, "War and Peace"), Ezra Edelman’s 467-minute epic look into O.J. Simpson’s life and one of the most notorious crimes in American history is told in five parts.

Edelman doesn’t just tell the story of the 1994 double murder of Simpson’s wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman. He tells the story of Los Angeles and its long, troubled relationship with African Americans.

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