The new documentary, “Moses — 13 Steps,” opens with footage of a contemplative Edwin Moses traveling on a ferry set against a beautiful Norwegian sunset sky. He is going to visit Karsten Warholm, world record holder in the 400-meter hurdles, the event dominated by Moses from his first world record and gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games to his second gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and on through the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where he ended his career with another Olympic medal, this one bronze.

During a streak that lasted “nine years, nine months and nine days,” as we are told, Moses won an astounding 107 consecutive 400-meter hurdle finals. He is, without a doubt, one of the best track and field athletes ever, and he will be in Boulder Saturday for the Colorado premiere of “Moses — 13 Steps,” one of the highlights of the Boulder International Film Festival (biff1.com).

“Running 400 meters over 10 hurdles is no joke,” Moses says in the film. “It is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

What a metaphor for life, and Moses’ journey from a “nerdy” kid in Dayton, Ohio, who loved reading and science and was taught discipline by his accomplished Tuskegee airman father — “curious all the time,” his mother says — to physics major at Morehouse College to engineer with General Dynamics and on to becoming a charismatic and articulate star, is beautifully laid out in “Moses — 13 Steps.”

And why “13 Steps”? In a segment that had me laughing, the still nerdy Moses explains the physics of running the hurdles and the need for his left leg to be closest to the curb around the left-hand turn on the track. He uses the number pi and some formulas to explain how he figured out that 13 steps was the most efficient way to race the 400 hurdles.

There is much more in the 105-minute feature documentary, including up-close footage from trackside at the 1976 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., and at the Montreal Olympics, where we see the calm and collected Moses waiting for the start of his first international race, one that would change his life and that of his sport.

“The tall, lithe, very impressive American in lane 2” won the gold medal with a new world record, returning afterward to Morehouse to take more differential equations and engineering classes on his way to graduation. With no career as a professional track athlete available back then, Moses took a job with General Dynamics in California, becoming a literal “rocket scientist.”

He kept training — more than 27,000 miles during his competitive career, he said Friday in a phone interview — learning on his own the best ways to train by talking to chemists, biologists and physiologists, among others. He was self-coached, and during the following summers after taking a leave from General Dynamics in 1979, Moses dominated the 400-meter hurdles on the European track circuit. The documentary shows footage of some of those races, most of which Moses had never seen before, such as the last of his four world records.

“Moses — 13 Steps” is much more than a great track story, although that would be plenty. It is a story about America. The track story does not really start until a third of the way through the film, which includes interviews with a host of big names such as astronomer Neal Degrasse Tyson and filmmaker Spike Lee. They, too, are graduates of Morehouse, where it was cool to be a serious student and to love learning, and where students were taught “aspects of manhood and Black manhood,” Moses says. The changing civil rights movement and the 1968 Olympic protest by U.S sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos are laid out well in the film.

“It is a story about excellence, about being a groundbreaker, about being able to make do” with what he had available, Moses said in our interview. He earned everything he achieved, from an academic scholarship to his gold medals to his world records; success came from “outworking people.” As runners know well, there are no handouts on the track, and “Moses — 13 Steps” “is a story about a little kid who started well back and kept going until he caught everyone. It took years.”

One more clue to his success came when, at the end of our interview, Moses, like many of us a self-described “spikehead” (think ‘Basketball Jones’), said “I love the sport. I love track and field.”

Siri Lindley and Ruth Wright Films >> “Tri Me: The Siri Lindley Story,” a documentary about the life of Boulder triathlon world champion and coach Siri Lindley, will be shown Sunday, with Lindley in attendance. Also on Sunday, “Citizen Ruth: Environmental Warrior,” detailing the life and environmental activism of Boulder icon Ruth Wright, will have its world premiere, with Wright, 96, in attendance.

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