If ever the essence of art and the logic of science combined to produce a spectacle, it was in the hurdling technique of Edwin Corley Moses. That the rangy star from Dayton, Ohio, elevated the concept of quarter mile hurdling to a sheer spell of aesthetics, that seamlessly combined power and strength, reflected in the sequence of 122 races that he won in a decade.
A hat-trick of Olympic gold medals in the most punishing event of competitive athletics, the 400m hurdles, would have been in Moses’ record today had not the boycott prevented him from participating at the Olympic Games in Moscow.
Interestingly, Moses strayed into athletics after a fairly long stint in basketball and football at high school; he even showed a penchant for gymnastics.
But when he took up athletics seriously, Moses’ single-minded devotion never wavered. The triumph in the 400m hurdles in 48.3 seconds, a national record, at the US open trials before the Montreal Olympics signalled the arrival of a competitor whose fine-tuning of hurdling nuances has been unmatched.
The success in Montreal with a world and Olympic record time of 47.63s underscores the enormity of Moses’ effort. The Moscow boycott did douse his spirits a wee bit, but he was high on competitions, scoring one victory after another. Imagine a sequence of 122 wins across the globe without tasting defeat, till Danny Harris outclassed him in May 1987.
The second successive gold in Los Angeles immortalised Moses as the second man to win two gold medals in 400m hurdles, the first being Glenn Davis in 1956 and 1960. Moses did win another Olympic medal, although it was a bronze in Seoul in 1988.
Moses was among the few US stars who took academics seriously. He even preferred to give up the sports scholarship to pursue his course in physics at the Morehouse College in Atlanta.
After Seoul Olympics Moses hung up his spikes and tried his hand at bobsledding with some success, earning a bronze for two-man teams in the 1990 World Cup in Germany.
Once off the track, he campaigned strongly against doping and led a movement to eliminate drugs from sport. Moses did creditable work as part of the IOC Medical Commission.
Currently, he heads the Laureus Sports Foundation, a body composed of finest sportsman from every discipline.
S. Thyagarajan
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