"The World's Greatest Athlete" stars John Amos ("Good Times"), Tim Conway ("The Carol Burnett Show"), and Jan-Michael Vincent ("Airwolf"). The plot follows Amos' college sports coach who is down on his luck. His leadership has not produced a winning team for his school; he is under threat of being fired if he doesn't find a way to turn the sports program around. On a vacation to Africa, he and Conway discover Nanu-- an orphaned Caucasian boy who was the son of missionaries, he was adopted by local villagers. He is a superb athlete, being able to outrun a gazelle. The coach sees his fortunes right in front of him,-but Nanu is uninterested in the Western world. So the coach concocts a scheme to trick Nanu into following him to America, where he promptly is enrolled as a student and made a star of the track and field program.
Will the coach's deception be revealed? Will Nanu find that he likes America and wants to stay? The under-rated character actor Roscoe Lee Browne plays a witchdoctor in a supporting role. Of curious interest is how the racial subtexts in the film were cleverly handled. By the early 70's, Disney studios was not known for casting African-Americans in prominent roles. The most obvious exception would be the still-controversial "Song of the South". Here, Amos is the ostensible lead, with Conway as the sidekick, instead of vice-versa. In another decade, the Nordic athlete Nanu might have been portrayed as being worshiped as a god by the villagers. Fortunately, the filmmakers bypass outdated notions of the "white jungle king" and portray Nanu as a young man satisfied with tribal life.