This documentary by director Jesse Moss reveals the life of James Arthur Hogue, a gifted runner who twice posed as other people and was ultimately outed when competing for Princeton University. Raised in Kansas City, Kansas, by the 9th grade he would win almost every race. Jim set his high school mile record of 4:18.4 in 1977 and would attend the University of Wyoming on an athletic scholarship. For two years he legitimately competed and ran alongside athletes who had ran on the Kenyan Olympic team. Footage from the 1977 NCAA Cross Country Championships show Henry Rono (WSU) dominating the race that year. In 1979 he dropped out of college, only to assume a new identity and enter Palo Alto High School at the age of 26. Lasting a brief period, he won the prestigious Stanford Invitational cross country meet before his real identity was discovered. When actually 31, and leaving a Utah prison, he gained entry to Princeton University as a freshman, and ran for them for a two year period before being discovered and sent to prison for three years for fraud. A host of sources try to shed light on the real Jim Hogue including several coaches, teammates, classmates, his cellmate, law enforcement, and in the end the lead character himself tells his own impression of his past behavior. Keith Mark, his childhood friend and teammate, states "He was a runner, first and foremost, that was his identity. To be a distance runner you have to be a con man and a liar to yourself. You have to convince yourself that you’re not hurtin’ when you know you’re hurtin’ and you have to con yourself into running five more miles when you want to quit right now." See a full time line of this story at MileEndFilms.com and you can order this 2002 film (released on DVD in 2006), complete with many extras, at Amazon.com.
