Billy Mills is still [to date, April 2014] the only ever American to win the Gold Medal for the Men's 10,000 meters long-distance running event at the Summer Olympic Games.
Some movie posters for the film featured preambles that read: (1) "On October 14, 1964, Billy Mills stunned the world by running the most sensational race in Olympic history. But it wasn't how he finished, it was where he started that made him a champion" and (2) "This is the true story of a man's personal triumph. Over prejudice, pain and himself. Billy Mills, a North American Indian brought up on the reservation, destined against all odds to become the best distance runner in the world".
The date that Billy Mills (Robby Benson) won the Men's 10,000 m long-distance athletics event and hence the Gold Medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad was 14th October 1964.
The indigenous American Indian genealogy of Billy Mills (Robby Benson) was half-white / half-Sioux Indian. The latter is also known as Oglala Sioux or Oglala Lakota and they are one of the seven Lakota people sub-tribes.
The name of the running race that as a student Billy Mills (Robby Benson) won as a junior was the "Custer County High School Cross Country Championship". The name of the college campus that Mills later went to as a youth was the University of Kansas.