As Sanka Coffie said so appropriately in Cool Runnings, "I'm feeling very Olympic today."

And so are we after Lizzy Yarnold carried the flag for Great Britain and Gangnam Style welcomed the US team into the stadium for the PyeongChang 2018 opening ceremony.

The ceremony kicks off a fortnight of Winter Olympics fever in South Korea that will no doubt prove contagious across the globe.

The Games on snow and ice are packed with drama and tailor made for magic moments.

You could say it's the drama you can't write - or could you?

Hollywood has been trying for years to nail the passion, excitement and humour in sport, from comedies and documentaries to biopics to heartwarming against-the-odds epics.

Here's 30 of the finest...

30. Over The Top

Very much over the top

The 1987 Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling film you never knew you wanted.

Arm wrestling is a sport right?

While we're here, arm wrestling fans will also want to check out Episode 13 of the new Twin Peaks.

29. The Hurricane

Denzel Washington puts in one of the best performances of his career (
Image:
Reuters)

The first of several boxing films to feature here, the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is heartbreaking and important.

Carter was a middleweight title contender who was wrongfully imprisoned for murder, condemning him behind bars during what would have been the prime of his career, and provides scope for one of Denzel Washington's best performances.

A cracking Bob Dylan song, too.

28. The Mighty Ducks

You can't argue with a flying V (
Image:
REX/Shutterstock)

How can such an outrageously awful film be on a list celebrating the best? Because of every kid in the world - and most of us when we’re genuinely honest with ourselves.

Given the chance to watch the last half hour of this, or any of the franchise, most red blooded humans would do it.

For those pretending they haven’t seen it, Emilio Estevez is Gordon Bombay, a lawyer done for DUI and forced to coach a kids hockey team. And so on.

Sequel D2: The Mighty Ducks, with Iceland playing the baddies for some reason, is even better. Knuckle puck!

27. Days of Thunder

Peak Cruise (
Image:
Paramount Pictures)

Sure, it's pretty much Top Gun in a car, but this showy effort features peak early-career Tom Cruise.

He plays a Nascar driver called Cole Trickle who's ego is writing cheques his body can't cash... we're confused.

And Nicole Kidman with curly red hair, the way it was meant to be. What's not to love?

26. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Shake and Bake (
Image:
Publicity Free Pic)

Talking of cars, this laugh riot is a sneaky-contender for Will Ferrell's best film - definitely a step up from Blades of Glory.

In terms of sporting film comedies, honourable mentions go to Dodgeball and Kingpin.

25. Slap Shot

You may get sick of all of this predictably inspirational. Let Paul Newman take you on a ride that will only inspire by making you feel you're having a better run than those on the screen.

Before stacking our supermarket shelves with jarred goods, Newman delivered this beauty of an ice hockey flick about a rag-tag minor league team.

He’s Reggie Dunlop, the ageing captain-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, whose owner wants to fold and move somewhere sunnier.

Queue street-smart Dunlop’s amusingly thuggish tactics, featuring the outrageous Hanson Brothers, to try and get them out of strife.

24. Escape to Victory

*punches the air* (
Image:
Mirror Screen Grab)

Token football film. Football is a genre that is not well-served in the movie industry.

In fact, the Goal franchise may have ruined Hollywood for the world game forever.

Sly Stallone is the terrible goal keeper and Michael Caine is the coach of an Allied prisoners of war team in a German POW camp.

Impossible not to have a soft spot for Pele's overhead kick.

23. Bull Durham

Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner in Bull Durham (
Image:
REX/Shutterstock)

Kevin Costner's best work has been done in sport movies, not dancing with dogs and definitely not on water.

In this memorable 1988 baseball film, he plays the ageing catcher brought in to get the best out of Tim Robbins' firebrand pitcher, with Susan Sarandon as both of their love interest.

Honourable mentions to Costner's golf gem Tin Cup and highly under-rated drama Draft Day about the general manager of the rubbish Cleveland Browns.

22. Remember the Titans

Denzel knows his way around a sports movie

Another classy Denzel Washington biopic that tackles the issues of race relations and integration in 1970s Virginia.

Such heavy subject matter is told through the eyes of a high school football team.

This beauty helped launch the careers of the likes of Ryan Golsing, Hayden Panettiere and Kate Bosworth, among others.

21. He Got Game

Killer soundtrack on this one

It was only a matter of time until Spike Lee made a basketball film.

This 1998 effort again features Denzel Washington, who stars alongside NBA player Ray Allen.

Lee was near the top of his game when he made this movie which featured his usual signature visual direction and adroit social commentary.

New York Knicks fan Lee was also able to coax Public Enemy out of a hiatus to produce the soundtrack.

20. Miracle

Miracle would be considered too far fetched if it wasn't a true story (
Image:
REX/Shutterstock)

Suspend disbelief for this most American of American underdog tales.

It tells the story of the young US ice hockey team that somehow managed to overcome the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

More than that, it’s about the coach Herb Brooks (brilliantly played by Kurt Russell), who pulled together a haphazard bunch of amateur college players to take down the professionals of their Cold War rivals.

Spoiler alert - the US won.

19. White Men Can't Jump

'Your mother's an astronaut' (
Image:
Channel 4)

Woody Harrison and Wesley Snipes combined for the first time in this 1992 movie, which is fun. Really fun. Even Rosie Perez isn't that annoying in it.

18. Friday Night Lights

A movie drenched in atmosphere

Adapted from one of the best sport books ever written, this tale of what high school means to a small Texas community was excellently adapted by Peter Berg and featured a superb soundtrack led by Explosions in the Sky.

Inspired the TV series, which was even better.

17. The Karate Kid

Don't mess with Danielson

A prototypical 1980s sports film that sees young Daniel take on the high-school bullies and those ruddy idiots from the Cobra Kai.

Inspired a generation to wax cars, paint fences and sweep the leg and ended with Joe Esposito's killer tune ' You're the Best' .

16. Chariots of Fire

You've got the music in your head, don't you? (
Image:
Rex)

The 1981 Oscar winner is a sacred cow of English sport films, telling the tale of two 1924 Olympic hopefuls.

But it's all about Vangelis' iconic soundtrack.

15. Moneyball

'Get a new rulebook'

Making a film about the pioneering use of an obscure baseball statistic to build a failing MLB side's roster must have been a tough pitch in a Hollywood exec's office, but Brad Pitt and company pulled it off, making a very watchable movie about challenging conventional wisdom.

Annoyingly the term 'moneyball' is now banded around incorrectly at least 80 per cent of the time on these shores, but they can't really be blamed for that.

14. Any Given Sunday

This includes some classic shouty-Pacino

Features perhaps the best sports movie speech ever, as Al Pacino tells us that the inches we need are all around us. It's enough to make you want to pull on some shoulder pads and take on a 300lb nose tackle.

Oliver Stone's kinetic energy brings with it some of the most realistic American football scenes committed to film, as Jamie Foxx made the transition from comic actor to serious soon-to-be Oscar winner.

Also delved into issues such as team ownership and concussions, which have come to the fore in the NFL in recent years.

13. Caddyshack

Gophers?

Sorry Will Ferrell, you can make all the sports movies you like, but you're not on Bill Murray's level.

This 1980 comedy set around a golf club sees Murray's groundskeeper Carl Spackler take centre stage as it does just about enough to be considered a sports movie.

12. Warrior

McGregor wouldn't stand a chance

A heavy one.

Tom Hardy plays an brooding ex-Marine who enlists the help of his alcoholic father to train him for a MMA contest, only to face his brother (Joel Edgerston) in the final.

The polar opposite brothers' relationship with their reformed alcoholic dad brings out a star turn in Nick Nolte.

And if the final scene set to the tune of instant classic 'About Today' from The National doesn't move you, you have no heart.

11. The Fighter

Even Mark Wahlberg's good in this one (
Image:
Publicity Picture)

Mark Wahlberg is the star as battling boxer Micky Ward, and is unusually impressive in the role, in this biopic that earned seven Academy Award nominations.

But Christian Bale steals the show as his junkie former fighter half-brother Dicky, who is at the centre of the turmoil that surrounds fiercely loyal Micky's chances of making it in the ring.

Bale and Melissa Leo, as their over-bearing mother, won Oscars for best supporting actor and actress, and it's impossible to argue.

10. The Hustler

How cool is he?

1960s Paul Newman? Yes please.

This instant classic is the tale of "Fast Eddie" Felson's journey through dark smoky pool halls as he faces a day of destiny against Minnesota Fats was responsible for reinvigorating the whole sport.

Director Robert Rossen helped Newman on his way to his best ever performance in a role he would reprise under Martin Scorsese for 1986's Color of Money.

9. Cool Runnings

Kiss your lucky egg and strap in for a heart-warming treat on ice.

Jamaica has its first women’s bobsled team at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang now, but this movie is all about the trailblazers of Caribbean sliding.

Derice, Junior and awesomely named Yul Brenner are destined to go the warm Olympics over 100m but end up with their face in the dirt.

Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme! Cool Runnings is a classic

Refusing to give up his Olympic dream, Derice forms a bobsled team - including his pushcart driving friend Sanka for comic relief.

He then enlists a drunk and disgraced former star of the sport (John Candy) as their coach and the rest, as they say, is loosely recollected history with plenty of laughs on the way to the most uplifting of endings.

Eddie the Eagle, the tale of Great Britain’s own Winter Olympics ‘hero’, would crack this list if it wasn’t so inferior to this in almost every single way.

8. Jerry Maguire

Go on, show him the money

Rewind to 1996. If your mates weren't singing Three Lions or repeating 'Bud' 'Weis' and 'Er' like a frog they were probably yelling 'show me the money at you'.

Tom Cruise in his pomp as a sports agent who has a moral awakening and looks to go it alone, with only one client - Cuba Gooding Jr's Rod Tidwell - and his former secretary for company.

Eminently quotable. And all the better for it.

7. The Wrestler

Rourke was back with a bang (
Image:
Publicity Picture)

If, like a lot us, you don't consider wrestling to be a sport, then Darren Aronofsky's 2008 is an eye opener. Micky Rourke plays a broken former superstar, living out his days in a trailerpark, earning minimum wage as the film hones in on the gritty details of the sport such as wrestlers using blades on themselves to make their injuries more visceral.

A comeback soon follows as he wrestles (hey, that's a metaphor) with life outside the spotlight.

This gritty piece of work saw Rourke nominated for an Oscar as he put in a mesmerising performance.

6. Rocky

One's a great fighter, the other fights great (
Image:
Rex)

For brevities sake, I'm only putting Rocky in once. Sylvester Stallone career-defining role has had it's ups and downs, but in terms of a pure, adrenaline-fuelled against-the-odds sports film, the first is hard to beat.

Oh and in case you were wondering, this is the definitive order in which to rank them: I, IV, Creed, II, III, Balboa, V.

5. Senna

A superb documentary (
Image:
Publicity Picture)

A spellbinding documentary that profiles the Brazilian F1 legend, unearthing press conferences, home movies and other unseen footage that puts you in the shoes of the enigmatic driver.

Far more than just a posthumous honouring of one of the most talented sportsmen of his generation, director Asif Kapadia shows how concerned with safety Senna was before the tragic circumstances at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994 which ended his life.

4. Hoosiers

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Released int the UK as 'Best Shot', this 1986 story of a coach training a small town high school basketball side is little-known on these shores but has all the tenants of a perfect sports movie.

Gene Hackman is the troubled coach drafted into motivate a group of no hopes, as he encourages them to work hard and stick to the fundamentals.

Inspirational speeches and all, Hackman nails his performance in a film that tugs at the heartstrings and is well worth checking out if you've not seen it.

3. When We Were Kings

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It took two decades for this film to be completed, but, boy, was it worth the wait.

Director Leon Gast flew out to Zaire for the 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman but was not able to raise the funds to complete it until 1996.

But that merely serves to add a huge layer of perspective to the fight, which saw underdog Ali again shock the world with his rope-a-dope tactics against the then-undefeated heavyweight champion.

The training footage of Ali alongside local children is astonishing, while the talking heads of Norman Mailer and George Plimpton help to deliver the final word on one of the 20th century's most remarkable sporting events.

2. Raging Bull

Director Martin Scorsese once admitted "I don't know anything about boxing", but the sport has provided him with the subject of perhaps the legendary film-maker's best movie.

Robert De Niro puts in a career-best performance as the late Jake LaMotta, a middleweight contender that is wrestling with his demons as Scorsese paints a picture of the psychological make-up you need to have in order to enter the ring.

Beautifully shot in a brooding black-and-white, every shot in this movie could be framed and hung up on a wall, it looks that good.

De Niro at his Oscar-winning best (
Image:
BBC)

The fight scenes are like nothing else committed to film before or since, as the camera whirls around the ring, with strange primal sounds bleed into your ears.

Production famously shut down for four months while De Niro ate his way around Italy to put on weight to play the aging LaMotta as he fought to come to terms with life outside the ring, quoting Brando in On The Waterfront in front of a nightclub audience.

Not that you need it, but the passing of the real-life LaMotta is a perfect reason to revisit one of the greatest films ever made.

1. Hoop Dreams

Number one.

Topping our list is this 1994 epic three-plus hour documentary that follows two African-American teenagers who dream of making the NBA.

Over a course of five years from the ages of 14 to 19, we follow the progress of Arthur Agee and William Gates and their ups and downs as they look to break out from the Chicago housing projects to the biggest stage of all.

Epic in scale, Steve James' film tackles a plethora of issues including the weight of expectations, economic discrimination, racism, growing up and the pressure of trying to lift yourself and your family out of povery.

One scene features possibly the tensest free throw in the sport's history, while Spike Lee is also drafted in to discuss modern corporatised college hoops: “Nobody cares about you. You’re black... This whole thing is revolving around money!”.

If you've not seen it, watch it. There are no other films like it out there.

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