He was hired by the Olympic Broadcasting Service (OBS) to be creative director for the world television feed of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, having previously fulfilled a similar role at Athens 2004. He worked on Sochi's winning bid for the Winter Games that are about to get under way in Russia - and also Qatar's successful campaign for the right to stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The Olympic Museum in Lausanne reopened to the public in December 2013 after an extensive renovation ©AFP/Getty Images


His latest work is for the benefit of visitors to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne which reopened to the public last month after an extensive renovation.

Titled Inside the Race and shown as a 180° surround sound film, it seeks to convey, in an intensely atmospheric way, the experience of being an Olympic athlete and what sets Olympians apart.

"It's the point where you explode," he tells me in an extended telephone interview. "You reach the wall and you go the extra yard, push through the pain barrier. A lot of athletes don't have that. That's what I want to focus on.

"Then, 'What does it take?'", a question the film answers by breaking down the essentials of Olympic performance into five ingredients: focus, concentration, pain, desire and determination.

The five and a half-minute work draws heavily on archive footage, both of Olympic greats such as Jesse Owens, Michael Phelps and Abebe Bikila, and quirkier shots emphasising, for example, the sinuosity of a shot-putter's hand as she prepares to throw. But these are combined with visual metaphors denoting pressure, pain and stress - paint bubbling, razor blades, tearing fabrics - as well as scarcely discernible voices and a dramatic soundtrack to generate a powerful, universally accessible, impact.

Goodrich believes that this approach "gives a whole new life to the material; it makes it original again".

Daryl Goodrich directed the Olympic films "Inspiration" and "Sport at Heart" for London 2012 ©Daryl Goodrich


Certainly, having watched the film a few times on my laptop, and enjoyed it, I am keen to experience it via the more advanced technology in place in Lausanne.

People are drawn to the Olympics in different ways, but Goodrich's career-path was heading this way pretty much from the outset.

For one thing, like Rowland, he was a good, national-level athlete - in Goodrich's case in karate. Indeed, he still teaches at club level. "I genuinely think it helps to have been an athlete," Rowland says. "We both understand the lonely hours you spend, the demands of performance."

After discovering his vocation by spending an afternoon with a camera as an 18-year-old at Bradford Art College - "that afternoon everything just became perfectly clear" - he quickly set about marrying sport and the creation of moving images.

His graduation film at Suffolk College in 1988 was a film to promote the Seoul Olympics. He describes it as "a very graphic sequence with live action". It involved a sundial, carved by a stonemason, with a figurine of an athlete marking each hour. As the shadow advanced, the film would cut to a live sequence of that particular sport.

Inside the Race is being featured at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne ©Daryl Goodrich

Partly on the strength of that he landed a role with a company called Cheerleader Productions working on Channel 4's American football coverage. "I was flown out to the US straight from college," he recalls.

"As a former athlete, I have a basic understanding and passion," he says when asked why he thinks he has succeeded in the very specialised branch of the film business that is mega-event campaigning.

"And I have always been a story-teller. I tell captivating stories visually. I was always interested in the visual arts, but rather than art for art's sake, I wanted to be taken on a journey. When I started as a graphic designer, it was all too stationary for me."

While he agrees that filmmakers working on Olympic bids cannot afford to be too egotistical - too many people expect an input into the finished product for that - he nonetheless argues that "ultimately you do still have one person with the final vision.

"Otherwise you will end up with a committee film."

Belief in the product is also usually an aid to convincing marketing, and Goodrich, it turns out, is a strong advocate of sport's power for good.

Inside the Race is shown as a 180° surround sound film and seeks to convey the experience of being an Olympic athlete ©Daryl Goodrich


"I am a firm believer in what sport can do to anybody," he tells me. "The ethos and spirit of the Olympic Movement is a motivational event to help people achieve what they wouldn't think they were capable of. For that reason I am a huge fan of the Olympic Movement."

Does he ever worry about being used as a political pawn?

"When it comes down to it I'm a sports-loving filmmaker," he replies. "If I get the opportunity to do any film about sport, I will consider it. I am not a politician. I haven't set out to make any films with any political agenda whatsoever."

While he says he will "continue to work on bid films as long as people want me", Goodrich's sports filmmaking is by no means confined to campaigns.

He made a short film for Channel 4 about Martine Wright, who lost her legs in the Aldgate underground explosion the day after London won the right to stage the 2012 Games and went on to compete as a sitting volleyball player at the 2012 Paralympics.

Daryl Goodrich made a short film about 7/7 bombing victim Martine Wright who went on to compete for Britain at the London 2012 Paralympics ©Getty Images



A 90-minute cricket comedy called Not Out, about a feud sparked by a contentious LBW appeal in pre-partition India that is somehow still going strong in Bradford half a century later, is also in the pipeline.

"I never see it as work," he says of his filmmaking. "It is a complete passion."

Where I'm afraid the 49 year-old does let the side down is in the party-going responsibilities that I had always understood were part and parcel of the serious film auteur's lot.

"On the last night of a shoot, he will make a profound effort to down a glass then go to bed," his collaborator, Rowland, discloses.

"My idea of a nightmare is going to Cannes," Goodrich confesses.

"I'm much happier with a cup of tea."

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.