The way they remember it, the big-dreaming decathlete named Bruce Jenner arrived in San Jose one day from Iowa as just another track and field athlete in search of gold.

“I’m here,” Jenner announced, strolling from his VW Bug onto the San Jose City College track in 1973. Few paid much attention.

By the time the Montreal Games ended 3﻿½ years later, Jenner had vaulted into stardom by winning the Olympic decathlon to join American legends Jim Thorpe, Bob Mathias and Rafer Johnson — a performance that catapulted him into a life of tabloid fame.

Now Jenner, 66, returns to the spotlight Wednesday as the mega celeb Caitlyn Jenner, the controversial recipient of the ESPY’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award after announcing in April that she is a woman.

But four decades ago, before this big reveal, before reality TV and the Kardashian escapades, Jenner just wanted to become the “World’s Greatest Athlete.” Along the way he helped turn the growing legend of San Jose State University’s “Speed City” on its head, rallying track fans to come watch workouts and support his cause with personal checks and porterhouse steaks.

San Jose was the place it all went down.

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San Jose City College coach Bert Bonanno had met Jenner on a training track at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.

Bonanno, then coaching for Peru, asked the one-time water-skiing champion from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, what he would do after the games.

Jenner, who finished 10th in Germany, planned to return to Iowa.

Bonanno invited him to join a burgeoning group of San Jose-based athletes who would ultimately bring home six Olympic medals from Montreal.

Bonanno, now retired but still living on San Jose’s east side, didn’t hear from Jenner until the day he arrived.

The Olympian had returned to Iowa to graduate from tiny Graceland College (now Graceland University). But, as always, he had a plan.

“So as soon as I took off my cap and gown, I jumped into my ’63 Volkswagen Bug,” Jenner once told this newspaper. “Pole vault strapped to the roof. Javelins sticking out the doors. Headed west.”

He didn’t need Dionne Warwick to ask if he knew the way.

“I asked myself, ‘Where are the world’s greatest athletes training?’ ” Jenner said. “That’s why I picked San Jose.”

He and his new wife, Chrystie, lived in a small apartment on Fruitdale Avenue overlooking the City College track.

She worked as a flight attendant, he sold insurance part time. But Jenner didn’t come to San Jose to launch an insurance career.

Al Feuerbach, a Los Gatos Olympian who held the shot put world record in those days, recalled this stranger walking across the field at San Jose State.

“In his high-pitched voice he said, ‘Hi, I’m here to train with you guys,’ ” Feuerbach said.

It would have been like walking up to Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, letting them know you would be joining them for batting practice.

In the 1960s, the area had been known as “Speed City” because of famous San Jose State Olympians John Carlos, Lee Evans and Tommie Smith.

By the time Jenner arrived on the scene the label had changed to “Strength City” because of throwing legends that included Brian Oldfield, John Powell, Mac Wilkins and Feuerbach.

There were sprinters, distance runners, long jumpers and pole vaulters, many coaching and pushing each other.

It could not have been a better place for a budding decathlete who needed to master 10 events.

“It was kind of sacred ground, really,” said Campbell’s Vince Stryker, a fellow decathlete who was Jenner’s closest companion during those days.

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With a goofy, friendly outlook, Jenner disarmed the high-testosterone guys and quickly fell into serious pursuit of reaching the summit of Olympus.

He had gone to Graceland on a football scholarship, but Jenner’s career ended in his freshman year because of knee surgery. The 6-foot-2, 190-pound athlete participated in basketball and track and field as a sophomore.

The school’s track coach L.D. Weldon had helped an Iowan win the decathlon Olympic bronze medal in 1936. He suggested Jenner try the multisport event in 1970.

Now the athlete trained fiendishly in the Bay Area, rotating with the groups of specialists at the San Jose campuses, De Anza College or the YMCA on The Alameda. His golden Labrador Bertha was a constant companion.

Amateurism still ruled the Olympics in those days, limiting athletes’ ability to cash in on their brand while competing. Most of the gang lived in cheap apartments. Some received food stamps.

Bonanno and Jenner were scrappy enough to find an early form of angel investors by doing the rounds at local Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. They collected checks for $50, $200, $300.

As word spread, track fans began showing up at Jenner’s flat with porterhouse steaks. The stands at San Jose City began to swell for practice sessions.

Jenner never lost his singular focus while trying to digest all those events. He had been an average pole vaulter and long jumper back in high school. Jenner had to refine those events, plus learn to hurdle, sprint and throw. Each discipline demanded precise technique.

“He would continue to train past others and go into his ‘beyondness,’ ” Bonanno said. “He was never one to be overwhelmed by this.”

Jenner’s happy-go-lucky temperament served him well in this relentless undertaking.

For relaxation?

Jenner and Stryker would hit the Dairy Queen on Fruitdale Avenue after workouts to get pineapple milkshakes.

***

The decathlon is the child of an ancient Greek Olympic event that combined five disciplines, including wrestling.

It’s held over two intense days that test the body’s limits with energy-sapping competition in sprinting, jumping, throwing and vaulting. Just for the sake of torture, the final event is a 1,500-meter run.

Jenner arrived in Montreal as the decathlon’s world-record holder and the favorite. But he wasn’t overhyped in an era before social media.

His rise turned the decathlon into a proxy for Cold War rhetoric with Jenner facing reigning Olympic champion Nikolai Avilov from the former Soviet Union.

Jenner had a strong first day to take the drama out of it. Although he had it won by the final event, Jenner ran the last lap of 1,500 meters hard to shatter his world mark with 8,618 points.

He took a victory lap with an American flag as a burst of camera flash bulbs illuminated the stadium.

“It looked like the Fourth of July,” Bonanno recalled.

The two hugged at the end of the tunnel. Jenner told Bonanno he was done competing, which was unusual for a 26-year-old decathlete.

“He had a different plan,” Feuerbach said. “I don’t think a lot of the rest of us were thinking beyond” competing. “It wasn’t like wanting to be on the Wheaties box.”

The athlete returned to San Jose to pack up for Hollywood as an avalanche of endorsement offers arrived. He wanted to keep a San Jose City College hurdle as a keepsake, but not much else.

Then came an audition for the lead in 1978’s “Superman,” a role that went to Christopher Reeve. Jenner eventually was cast in the 1980s bomb, “Can’t Stop the Music,” a Village People pseudo-biopic.

There were marriages to Elvis Presley’s former girlfriend and, in 1991, Kris Kardashian. He drove race cars, flew planes, partook in triathlons.

Through it all, Jenner never forgot his way to San Jose. He returned annually to the Bruce Jenner Classic track meet that began in 1977 and lasted almost two decades.

The meet that attracted international stars helped keep the area in the track and field spotlight.

“We put San Jose on the map,” Bonanno said.

No one had a bigger role in that than the big dreamer from Iowa.

Contact Elliott Almond at 408-920-5865. Follow him at Twitter.com/elliottalmond.