A documentary by Bayley Silleck. Rated G. Opens at the Omnimax Theatre on Saturday, December 17.

As a study of the brain's power over the physical body, Wired to Win could easily have focused on mud wrestling or elephant polo. But the fact that this high-concept biology-class film zooms in on the world's most physically punishing sport-one that also happens to take place in a stunning setting-helps make this latest IMAX offering a lot more enjoyable than it might have been otherwise.

Wired to Win is not a Tour de France film per se, though it does follow one of the 3,000-kilometre bike race's most exciting recent competitions: that of 2003. It uses the cyclists to illustrate the way our grey matter gives us the power to endure inhuman tasks-how our brain rewires itself to build skills and overcome pain.

The film flips back and forth from tracking two lesser-known participants in the race, Team France's Jimmy Casper and Aussie-born Baden Cook, to computer-animated images of cutting-edge neurological discoveries. Watch endorphins pumping down the spinal column or a shouted warning shooting along the ear canal and sparking off a series of signals in the brain. Three-D digital effects allow the filmmakers to take the brain apart like a Lego toy or, in a Daliesque moment, map its squiggly pain centre with eyes, tongue, legs, and other body parts.

But what sticks with you after the film is the aerial footage of the tiny cyclists veering at 100 klicks per hour down hairpin turns in the Pyrenees and powering up steep inclines in the Alps like Terminators in neon spandex. Wired to Win has the scale to give the viewer a real you-are-there feel for the speed and skill involved in the Tour-much more than you get on a TV screen. As for the neurological lesson, it may be a little cursory for you to rewire yourself into the next Lance Armstrong just yet.