I met Billy Mills & his wife when the film was shown at a film festival here in Hawaii. They were both really nice. Like the Frank character, Mills said that the Coach Easton character had a combination of traits from several of his former coaches. He said that the real Coach Easton was pretty cool & not the jerk the movie made him out to be, but that the real Easton gave his permission for his character to have the negative qualities the movie portrayed. Pretty noble, I thought, of Easton.
Mills also said that he had many siblings, which was not portrayed in the movie.
Also, the track in the movie is synthetic, & not the cinder track that was actually in use at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
It was funny, Mills said that the studio folks prior to making the film offered to donate profits from the film to Mills' favorite charity and he said that at that time, his favorite charity was his young family.
Aloha,
Karl H.