PROFESSION: Professional Sports Player
US Olympian and Gold medalist in Track and Field.
What do you get when you combine immense athletic talent with a scientific mind and precision-like race execution? You get Edwin Moses, the finest hurdler who ever lived.
A two-time Olympic Gold medalist (it surely would have been three if not for the 1980 Moscow boycott), it is hard to believe that as a youngster, Edwin Moses harbored no great desire to excel in athletics. "I had no ambitions to be an Olympic track star or any kind of athlete," he said.
As both parents were educators, Moses took academics seriously. He found he also liked track, drifting away from team sports. "I found that I enjoyed individual sports much more," he said. "Everything is cut and dry; nothing is arbitrary. It's just a matter of getting to the finish line first."
Moses would go on to make a career out of dong that.
Rather than seeking an athletic scholarship, Moses accepted an academic scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, majoring in physics and engineering.
He took time enough away from his studies to dabble in a number of track events, before settling on the 400-meter hurdles. With a huge, nearly 10-foot stride, Moses honed his prodigious skills in the event quickly. He arrived at the Montreal Olympics as a virtual 20-year-old unknown, but took the Games by storm, obliterating the field and setting a 400-hurdle world record of 47.64 in the process. It did not take long for all to understand they were in the presence of greatness.
Moses was not embraced by the public despite his achievements, hiding behind shades and seen as distant, cool. He was known as "the bionic man" at Morehouse, for his great work ethic and scientific approach. Moses was far ahead of his time in his approach to training. He was basically self-coached, feeling no one knew what was best for his training better than he did. He was a proponent of heart-rate training years before such devices were available to the general public. He cut the number of strides he took between hurdles to 12, something thought to be impossible before he made it look easy.
Edwin Moses did it his way, and it's hard to argue with the results. He lost to Harald Schmid on August 26, 1977, but folks, that was it for the next decade. He would not lose a 400-meter hurdles race for 10 more years, a stretch that included 122 races and 107 finals. It was an utterly astonishing achievement, as he routinely beat some of the finest track athletes in the world. Some world-class hurdlers spent their entire careers chasing the unmatchable Moses. "I have the killer instinct," Moses said. "It's ego. When I'm on the track, I want to beat everyone."
On his 28th birthday in 1983, Moses produced his pinnacle achievement, his lifetime best of 47:02. " Well, I haven't had a (personal record) for three years," he said with a laugh. Along with his excellence on the track, Edwin Moses was a leader off it as well. He openly challenged the hypocrisy of the rules that prohibited amateurs from accepting money for competing and endorsements, helping to push the sport into a new era.
While fellow athletes appreciated Moses' stand on that issue, he was less popular when he spoke out against performance enhancing drug use. He recognized early on how damaging the use of such drugs by athletes could be, both for the health of the athlete and the sport. "Somebody had to say something," he said. "What are these people doing to their bodies? Is winning worth that price? I don't think so."
Moses earned a master's degree from Pepperdine University in 1994 and has been involved in the governing of the sport with IAAF in recent years as well. Asked how he would like to be remembered, Moses replied, "Hopefully, as the guy nobody could beat. Maybe in the years to come, people will understand the things I have accomplished and realize, 'Wow, this guy was really something."
Former Olympic coach Leroy Walker thought so. When asked about Moses, Walker said "In an art gallery, do we stand around talking about Van Gogh? Extraordinary talent is obvious. We (were) in the rarefied presence of an immortal. Edwin's a crowd unto himself." Indeed Moses was one of the best who ever stepped onto the track.
♠ Born: Aug. 31, 1955
♠ Inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1985
♠ Inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1994
♠ Winner of the Jesse Owens International Trophy (1984)
♠ Winner of the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award (1983)
♠ Winner of the USOC Sportsman of the Year (1984)
♠ Won Olympic Gold Medals in 400 meter hurdles (1976, 1984)
♠ Won Olympic Bronze Medal in 400 meter hurdles (1988)
♠ Won 400 meter hurdles at IAAF Championships (1983, 1987)
♠ Won 122 consecutive races from 1977-87
Posted By: Reginald Culpepper
Friday, September 30th 2005 at 11:45PM
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