Edwin Moses
Edwin Moses is a prominent American track and field athlete, born on August 31, 1955, in Dayton, Ohio. He initially pursued basketball and football in high school but turned to track and field after being cut from teams. Moses garnered national attention after winning a gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where he set a new world record. His natural athleticism, characterized by a longer stride, allowed him to excel in hurdles, leading to an unprecedented winning streak of 107 consecutive races.
A graduate of Morehouse College, Moses leveraged his academic background in physics and engineering to enhance his training and performance techniques. He faced a setback in 1980 due to the Olympic boycott but continued to set records and ultimately secured a second Olympic gold in 1984. Beyond his athletic achievements, Moses became an influential advocate for clean sports, challenging outdated rules and promoting anti-doping policies. His contributions to athletics earned him numerous accolades, including induction into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1994, solidifying his legacy as one of the most respected figures in track and field history.
Edwin Moses
Olympic Athlete
- Born: August 31, 1955
- Birthplace: Dayton, Ohio
Track-and-field athlete
Moses was the dominant 400-meter hurdler in track and field for more than a decade. His 107 straight wins was the sport’s longest-ever winning streak. During his first year competing in the event, Moses became the Olympic champion and world-record holder.
Areas of achievement: Sports: Olympics; Sports: track and field
Early Life
Edwin Conley Moses was born on August 31, 1955, in Dayton, Ohio. He was the second of three sons of Gladys and Irving Moses. Irving played football at Kentucky State University and was an elementary school principal; Gladys was a supervisor in the Dayton public school system. Moses’s parents emphasized the importance of education, and Moses was very serious about academics.
After Moses was cut from his high school basketball team and kicked off the football team for fighting, he turned to track and field. He competed in the hurdles and 440-yard dash as a high school student. Moses accepted an academic scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he majored in physics and engineering. Although Morehouse had a track team, it did not have a track. The team used various public high school facilities around Atlanta.
At Morehouse, Moses competed in the 110-meter high hurdles, 400 meters, and 4-by-100-meter relays. He had run only one 400-meter hurdles race before he turned his attention to the event at age twenty, only five months before the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.
Despite his inexperience, Moses advanced quickly in the 400 hurdles. He had a longer stride than most of his competitors, which allowed him to take fewer steps between hurdles. At a time when all world-class hurdlers took fourteen steps between hurdles, Moses took only thirteen. He won the Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, in an American-record time of 48.30 seconds.
Life’s Work
Moses had never competed in an international meet before the 1976 Olympics. An unknown athlete from a historically Black university, he shocked the world by winning a gold medal and setting a world record of 47.64 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles. He finished eight meters ahead of teammate Mike Shine, the largest margin of victory in the event’s Olympic history. Remarkably, Moses had achieved all these feats within his first year of competing in the event.
At Morehouse, Moses took a scientific approach to analyzing his performance and developing his training methods. The year after the Montreal Olympics, Moses set another world record of 47.45 seconds at the Pepsi Invitational. Later that year, he lost to Harald Schmid of West Germany. He did not lose again for nearly ten years. Moses dominated the 400-meter hurdles with an amazing winning streak of 107 straight victories, the longest streak ever achieved by an individual athlete in track and field.
Moses graduated from Morehouse in 1978 and began preparing for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. He was unbeatable on the track, but politics prevented him from winning his second Olympic gold medal when President Jimmy Carter ordered American athletes to boycott the Moscow Olympics. Despite his disappointment, Moses was able to prove that he was still the best in the world: He improved his own world record to 47.13 seconds in a race in Milan, Italy.
Moses took advantage of his star status to challenge track-and-field rules that prohibited amateurs from accepting money for competing and endorsing products. At the time, many athletes were being paid under the table, and Moses believed that it should be done legally. He also was strongly opposed to the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
On his twenty-eighth birthday, Moses raced to another world record—47.02 seconds—in preparation for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The Summer Olympics had not been held in the United States in fifty-two years, and excitement was building for a strong American showing. Moses did not disappoint. He became only the second man to repeat as gold medalist in the 400-meter hurdles. One of the most memorable moments of his career came when he was chosen to recite the Athletes’ Oath during opening ceremonies in Los Angeles.
On June 4, 1987, Moses’s decade-long winning streak came to an end when he lost to Danny Harris at a competition in Madrid. Nearing the end of his career, he nonetheless followed that defeat with ten consecutive wins. Moses’s final 400-meter hurdles race came at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. He finished third. He went on to train with the United States bobsled team in an attempt to compete in the 1992 Winter Olympics, but did not make the team. After the end of his track-and-field career, Moses gave his time and energy to many charitable organizations and served as president of the International Amateur Athletic Association. He used his physics and business degrees to help develop anti-doping policies for the US Olympics organization. He served as chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency's Education Committee, and he also held the position of Laureus World Sports Academy chair, an organization that works for social change through sports.
Among the many honors Moses won throughout his career are the Sullivan Award, given to the top United States amateur athlete, and the Jesse Owens Award, given to the top United States track and field athlete. He also was selected as the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in 1984. In 1994, Moses was inducted into the US Track and Field Hall of Fame.
Significance
Moses dominated his sport for a decade, becoming one of the best known and most highly respected track-and-field athletes in history. Never content to rely solely on his talent, he worked assiduously and creatively to improve his performance and refine his technique throughout his career. Moses also was an advocate for his fellow athletes and promoted the Olympic ideal of fair and drug-free competition.
Bibliography
"Edwin Moses: The Unbeatable Hurdler." Olympic.org. Olympic Movement, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.
Hymans, Richard. The History of the U.S. Olympic Trials: Track and Field. Indianapolis: USA Track and Field, 2004. Print.
Knapp, Ron. “Edwin Moses.” In Top Ten American Men’s Olympic Gold Medalists. Springfield: Enslow, 2000. Print.
Nelson, Cordner. “Edwin Moses.” In Track’s Greatest Champions. Los Altos: Tafnews, 1986. Print.
Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan. Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War. New York: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.
Schwartz, Larry. "Moses Made Winning Look Easy." ESPN.Go. ESPN Internet Ventures, n.d. Web. 31 May 2016.
Woolard, Rob. "Carl Lewis Slams Long-Jump, Fears 'Dying Sport.'" Yahoo! Sports. AFP, 8 Mar. 2016. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.