Before Berlin, Jesse Owens made history at Michigan

It has been called the greatest performance in track history. What Jesse Owens did in 45 minutes at the University of Michigan in 1935.

Four events. Four world records. A run-up for what Owens would do a year later in Berlin, before Adolf Hitler, when the sprinter grabbed hold of the 1936 Olympics with four gold medals and, thus, the world’s imagination.

It’s hard to fathom what that moment must have been like for Owens, who was celebrated as the face of the American collage but was treated as a second-class citizen back home. A new movie, “Race,” which opens in theaters today, tries to capture what Owens’ ascension was like, from high school phenom to Ohio State star to transcendent Olympian.

No step was bigger than that day in Ann Arbor, at Ferry Field, during the conference track and field championships. He began with the 100-yard dash, tying the world record at 9.4 seconds. He followed with the long jump — 26 feet, 81/4 inches, besting the record by 6 inches.

From there, he ran the 220, finishing in 20.3, three-tenths of a second better than the record. What a sight that must have been, watching Owens churn through the crushed cinder — the favored surface of its day — blazing 220 yards without a curve.

Back then the 220 was run on a straightaway, with one side of the oval extended into a sort of chute. Some 10,000 onlookers packed the wooden stands surrounding Ferry Field. What they witnessed was surely breathtaking, as the sophomore from Ohio State set or tied three world records in little more than a half an hour.

Owens’ final event came at 4 p.m., or 45 minutes after his first. He ran the 220 low hurdles in 22.6 seconds; almost a half-second quicker than anyone had ever run.

The track star first made news when he tied the world record in the 100 as a high school senior. He arrived in Columbus — from Cleveland — as something of a marvel. Yet his transition was difficult, according to the movie, through no fault of his own.

Owens endured all manner of hate and slurs at Ohio State, from those within the athletic department and from those without. The sports world was in awe of his speed and power, but the sports world — then, as today — is merely a reflection of everything else, which meant that “awe” often came with a cost.

As the movie makes clear, Owens didn’t just face racism in Hitler’s Germany. He dealt with it here, every day. Thus, the movie’s title: “Race.”

Its release feels timely as we continue to grapple with our fears and differences, as we try to figure out how to undo the injustices that persist — they are plenty. Obviously, no single movie will heal us.

Yet the story of Owens is a reminder that the stories we tell ourselves are often the gauzy versions that prevent us from changing what we truly should. Owens’ achievement at the 1936 Olympics was monumental, for its athletic statement, for its social context, for its slap-down of the Fuhrer and his Aryan nonsense.

But the ugliness he faced back home was no less caustic. “Race” doesn’t let us forget this, even as it celebrates one of the great athletes this country has ever produced.

His titanic accomplishment in Ann Arbor during the spring of 1935 is our connection to Owens’ global story. He kicked up cinder and earth on a swath of land that is tucked into U-M’s athletic complex.

Ferry Field remains, though not in its original incarnation. A rubber-decked oval engulfs part of the old grounds now. At the southeast corner of the track, affixed to a short, brick wall, is a plaque commemorating Owens’ place in U-M history.

Imagine that?

A Buckeye.

“A great gesture,” said Mike McGuire, who coaches U-M’s women’s cross-country team, and who met Owens in the early 1970s at a conference meet.

Owens had been invited back to serve as an honorary referee; McGuire was there as a fan — he’d been recruited to run at the school.

“He was very gracious to spend time with a couple of 17-year-olds,” McGuire said.

The cross-country coach shares his story of meeting Owens — and of the track icon’s outsized achievements — with his young runners every year.

Most haven’t heard of Owens, who died in 1980. So McGuire will encourage them to see the movie, too, even though he is not a moviegoer by nature.

“This is one I’m planning on,” he said.

There is simply too much history to ignore. Especially when he sees a small piece of it every day.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.