Finally meeting an old friend!

This will be quite a long story made as short as possible. Back in 1980, Kit Laughlin and I were both shooting on film quite separate documentaries at the same event. This was inside the Sydney Opera House at an event won by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kit and I did not actually meet that day.

About a year or so later when Kit's documentary was released, titled The Comeback, I became more aware of his production which was very much based on behind the scenes in the build-up to the event. Mine was based purely on the actual contest.

Jumping forward a few more years, Kit approached me to transfer and author his video to DVD, working right from scratch from the original award winning film. Plus adding some extras for the DVD in the form of my own photos as a Photo Gallery.

This all turned out most successfully and the DVD met with great support. All this time I had never actually met Kit. Our work was done via faxes, then emails and phone calls. Kit is presently in Adelaide running some stretching courses, and today was the day we finally caught up for a face to face meeting! It only took us 34 years to get to this point, but we did it!

Apart from his directing and producing for the ABC in his early days, Kit also moved into other fields including photography, and so much more. Here are a few bits and pieces from his amazing career:

Kit Laughlin is one of the world’s authorities on the subject of stretching. He studied oriental traditional Japanese medicine during a four-year stay in Japan and was the personal Shiatsu practitioner for the Japanese Ambassador in Australia.

Formerly he had been a middle distance runner and weight lifter, becoming a student of exercise forms - attended dance and gymnastics classes - studied anatomy and physiology, and studied Yoga and Pilates.

He was awarded a Master of Letters by the Science Faculty of the Australian National University in Canberra (1992) and was granted an Australian Postgraduate Research Award (1993–96) for Ph.D. research, where back pain was the main case study.

If you wish to read more of Kit's amazing story, click here.