As Molly Meldrum loves to say, "do yourself a favour" and watch The Long Run on Channel Nine on Sunday night. It's inspirational television at its best. And it brings to the national stage something Canberra's marathon man Rob de Castella has been working on for 16 years, the Indigenous Marathon Project.
Each year, 12 young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants are selected to train for the New York City Marathon, the culmination of a six-month health, education and leadership program.
In The Long Run, sporting icons Lance "Buddy" Franklin and Johnathan Thurston mentor the 12 squad members and train with them for what is also their first marathon, forming bonds and revealing what life for them is like post-retirement.
Rugby league great Thurston, 43, who retired from the game in 2018, said working with the squad "was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I've ever done".
"Hearing their stories, understanding what it took for them to get to the start line, and seeing the sacrifices they made along the way was incredibly humbling," he said.
Swans and Hawthorn legend Franklin, 39, who retired from the AFL in 2023, said being part of the Indigenous Marathon Project was "incredibly special".
"This documentary is about much more than running," he said. "It is about courage, self-belief, and what is possible when people take on something bigger than themselves."
Encouraging them all along every step in this fly-on-the-wall documentary is Canberra's Rob de Castella, who runs the Indigenous Marathon Foundation from a modest office in Phillip.
The Long Run was produced by Nine's Wide World of Sports and Canberra production house Good Shout, with support from the ACT government and Screen Canberra.
Franklin, Thurston, de Castella and some of the squad members watched the show for the first time at a cinema in Sydney on Wednesday night and were "blown away".
"Everyone was just in tears and so moved by the story," de Castella said.
"Everyone is just so proud of what the Good Shout guys have put together."
De Castella, the former world champion marathon champ, and his team have since 2010 put 167 people through the Indigenous Marathon Project. Among them, the graduates have run more than 300 marathons and many have gone on to create their own running groups back in their own communities.
De Castella is excited that the whole nation now gets to understand the project us about creating a generation of leaders, not just runners.
"I'm really just hoping the story uplifts and inspires and is just a positive celebration of these amazing young First Nations men and women," he said.
More than 300 people, aged from 18 to 30, apply each year to join the 12-member marathon squad. Those showcased in The Long Run include an Indigenous physiotherapist, radio host, engineer and lots of mums and dads who wants to be role models for their children.
"We have the high-profile stars, Buddy and JT, but, really, the stars of the show are the squad," de Castella said.
The squad members only get on the plane to New York after completing a series of runs, starting with the 10-kilometre Mother's Day Classic in Canberra and finishing with a brutal 30-kilometre run in Alice Springs. The reason each runner wants to do the marathon is a major determinant for who gets selected and who doesn't.
"They don't get selected on their running ability. They get selected on what we see is their capacity to really have an impact and make a contribution," de Castella said.
And the story doesn't end at the finish line in Central Park. Each person will still face challenges and struggles in life. The marathon prepares them for what's in store.
"It is hard and it's meant to be hard," de Castella said.
"It's only when you do things that really test you that you draw on your strength and the people around you to get you through those tough times and the marathon just becomes this amazing metaphor for so much more."
For Nicholas Arganese and Brett Frawley, owners of the Good Shout production company based in Mitchell in the ACT, the story of the Indigenous Marathon Project was one too good to ignore.
"When we first sat down with Rob de Castella, he explained that one of the core missions of the Indigenous Marathon Project is to showcase to the nation that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is Australia's greatest national treasure," they said.
"If more people thought about that, believed it, and acted upon that belief, then we might find ourselves on the right path towards unification and reconciliation. Only positive stories of First Nations strength and empowerment will win hearts and minds, negative stories will never get us there.
"Once we realised that the opportunity here was to tell a strength-based story on the Nine Network, we knew we had to be all the way in."
Thurston and Franklin were new to distance running but took it on the challenge of trying to complete the New York Marathon with the other 12 trainees.
"They've got an elite athlete mindset and once they committed to it, you could see how much effort, especially JT, was putting into every event," de Castella said.
De Castella, now 69, says his marathon running days are long over but he does still go for a jog most mornings.
To the young men and women facing the challenge of the Indigenous Marathon Project, de Castella is their ultimate tough-love cheerleader. And he'll keep being that for as long as he can.
"This year's squad comes into the Gold Coast next week, so the story continues. It's a never-ending story," he said.
