The song playing over the end credits of track and field film Race (2016) has a line “let the best man win”.

Race is a straightforwardly told Jessie Owens story about the best man at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It co-stars Jason Sudeikis (Angry Birds) as Owens’ coach Larry Snyder and a young Jessie Owens is played by Stephan James.

Owens was this best man. He won in the sprints and long jump and set the records for twenty-five years.

Race shows that best man Owens presented a possible dilemma for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels at the games, who led the games organized by Nazi Germany.

Negroes like Owens were considered fundamentally flawed by the Nazis. But they were confronted with the reality of Owens speed and ‘perfection’.

The Nazis wanted to breed a perfect specimen of human being. The best sports people were thought to be genetically well-endowed.  The best sportspeople, it was thought, would have the genetic make-up for perfect offspring.

German sprinter Carl Lung tells Owens how he was propositioned by a German woman to get her pregnant. Lung was set up by the Nazis. He was the perfect specimen to produce the perfect offspring. This is when the reality of the so-called ‘superior race’ hits home hardest in Race.

Negroes along with Jews and others weren’t considered perfect humans. They were considered ultimately flawed and unsuitable.  Yet the best man is Jessie Owens. It is German Carl Lung who loses to Owens in the sprints and long jump.

Does this make Owens the kind of perfect human being the Nazi’s sought? It doesn’t, because of the flawed ideology of the Nazi’s.

Owens’ wins must have been a dilemma for Adolf Hitler. Even if Hitler refused to accept that a black man is the best man, Owen’s testimony is a challenge to the perfect race theory. Owens, an African American, a black man, someone who is considered inferior by the Nazis because of his ‘race’, is the better sportsman.

The point of Race is that black or white, someone wins, not based on color, but based on giftedness, talent, and ability. This you can’t discriminate against.

Race was released to DVD in North America on May 31, 2016