Race

Is a dramatization of the life of black American sprinter Jesse Owens in the three years leading up to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, largely meant as a showcase for the Nazi regime's Aryan superiority race policy, which is most specifically anti-Semitic. He is already facing challenges in going to school at Ohio State in the racial segregation and racial discrimination against the black population in much of US society. The one person who doesn't care what color Jesse is is Ohio State track coach Larry Snyder, an alumnus and former world class runner in his own right whose job is on the line in not having yet mentored an Olympic-caliber athlete. Beyond working on technique, Larry works on Jesse's mental state, he needing to black out all the literal and proverbial external noise to be successful, which gets more and more difficult with Jesse's greater notoriety and the increasing pressure on him to win. Much of that other noise relates to the many "what ifs" in the racial issue: what if the Nazi regime does not allow black and Jewish people to compete; what if the US boycotts the Olympics to protest those race policies; what if he decides not to go to the Olympics also in protest; and what if he does go and loses.