Edwin Moses

Edwin Corley Moses (born August 31, 1955) is an American track and field athlete who won gold medals in the 400 metre hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. Between 1977 and 1987, Moses won 107 consecutive finals (122 consecutive races) and set the world record in his event four times. In addition to his running, Moses was also an innovative reformer in the areas of Olympic eligibility and drug testing. In 2000, he was elected the first Chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, an international service organization of world-class athletes.

Edwin Moses is a Vegetarian.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Moses accepted an academic scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta and majored in physics and industrial engineering while competing for the school track team. Morehouse did not have its own track, so he used public high school facilities around the city to train. Initially, Moses competed mostly in the 120-yard hurdles and 440-yard dash. Before March 1976, he ran only one 400-meter hurdles race, but once he began focusing on the event he made remarkable progress. His trademark technique was to take a constant 13 steps between each of the hurdles, pulling away in the second half of the race as his rivals changed their stride pattern. That summer, he qualified for the US team for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In his first international meet, Moses won the gold medal and set a world record of 47.63 seconds.

After breaking his own world record the following year, Moses lost to West Germany's Harald Schmid on 26 August 1977 in Berlin, his fourth defeat in the 400-meter hurdles. Beginning the next week, when he beat Schmid by 15 meters in Düsseldorf, Moses did not lose another race for nine years, nine months and nine days.

By the time American Danny Harris beat Moses in Madrid on June 4, 1987, Moses had won 122 consecutive races, set the world record two more times, won three World Cup titles, two World Championships, and earned his second Olympic gold medal in Los Angeles, where he was selected to take the Olympic Oath. After losing to Harris, he won 10 more races in a row, then finished third in the final 400-meter race of his career at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. As of October 2008, he still holds 26 of the 100 fastest times in the 400-meter hurdles.

Despite the Olympic boycott that kept him from competing in Moscow, Moses was the 1980 Track & Field News Athlete of the Year. A year later, he became the first recipient of USA Track & Field's Jesse Owens Award as outstanding U.S. track and field performer for 1981. He received the AAU's James E. Sullivan Award as outstanding amateur athlete in the United States in 1983. He was being named as ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year in 1984. Moses also shared the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year with American gymnast Mary Lou Retton in 1984, the same year he took the Athlete's Oath for the 1984 Summer Olympics. In 1984 his hometown of Dayton renamed Miami Boulevard West and Sunrise Avenue "Edwin C. Moses Boulevard". In 1999, Moses ranked #47 on ESPN's SportCentury 50 Greatest Athletes.