On track: "Personal Best"

I don't know whether you've spotted this already, but apparently there's an Olympiad this year, at a venue close to home. Personal Best, Sam Blair's revealing, atmospherically lensed profile of several of the young British athletes hoping to be there or thereabouts come July and August impresses from the gun with the extent of its access. It's there at the track on those days when the generally peppy sprinter Jeanette Kwakye doesn't much feel like completing her circuits, and there again at the bedside of hurdler Richard Alleyne as he goes in for one of those cartilage operations you always hear sportspeople are set to undergo; it's there again as Alleyne returns to the gym, and starts to wonder whether he has a career left, much less a shot at Olympic glory.

No small part of the film's compulsive hold is that these are British athletes: not the swaggering superhuman likes of Usain Bolt or Asafa Powell, but individuals prone to doubt and self-deprecation. By any normal standards, the likes of Kwakye and her male counterpart James Ellington are world-class - and have competed at that level - but they may only place fourth, fifth or sixth come the day of the final; given the exertion and sacrifice it takes getting there, that in itself rarely feels good enough. Many of these athletes have grown up in the inner cities, and have been lucky to some degree, in that their natural talent was caught early, and then fostered into a way out, a way of life. Yet even then, we're made aware, the decision to pursue a full-time athletics career remains a gamble: sure, focus on sport - to the possible detriment of one's studies, and any hope of a back-up plan - with an eye to the grand payday of the Golden League, but what if, as Ellington found, the sponsorship runs dry, and you find yourself having to sell yourself on eBay to support your training, your family? As the mother of one teenage aspirant puts it: "So much to gain, so much to lose".

Mind-body, risk-reward: Personal Best never lacks for dramatic conflict, and seasoned sports viewers will be gripped by the sight of individuals attempting to achieve the world in the blink of an eye - whether the ten or so seconds it takes to run the 100 metres, or the ten to fifteen years of the average track career (if you're lucky enough to avoid injury). We even get a passing illustration of what a cruel mistress the track can be: stumbling in eighth in one early indoor race is Mark Lewis-Francis, once the great young hope of British sprinting, now perhaps destined to go down as yet another of the sport's countless nearlymen. There's still a certain scepticism and cynicism surrounding London 2012, much of it - it has to be said - emanating from within the M25. Perhaps this was to be expected; it's become part of our national character to fear the worst and duck the limelight. Yet Blair's film offers another, more encouraging angle on the Games, highlighting the hard work and genuine human achievement waiting to be discovered and properly celebrated, once all of the hoopla and flagwaving has subsided. The clock, meanwhile, keeps on ticking.

Personal Best is in selected cinemas.