Edwin Corley Moses is a former track and field athlete from the United States who won gold medals in the 400 m hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. He won 107 consecutive finals (122 consecutive races) between 1977 and 1987, establishing the world record four times. Despite being barred from competing in the summer games in Moscow due to a US-led boycott, Moses was named Track & Field News Athlete of the Year in 1980. H e was named the first recipient of USA Track & Field's Jesse Owens Award for outstanding U.S. track and field performance in 1981. In 1984, he was awarded Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year alongside American gymnast Mary Lou Retton.
Moses participated in a 1990 World Cup bobsled event in Winterberg, Germany, following his retirement from the track. He and long-time US Olympian Brian Shimer took bronze in the two-man event. Moses graduated from Pepperdine University with an MBA in 1994 and was later admitted to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. As a sports administrator, he took part in the development of several anti-drug laws and assisted the track and field community in creating one of the most rigorous random in-competition drug testing programs in all of sports. He has been a pioneer in developing a framework and protocols that have drastically curtailed the use of illegal, performance-enhancing medicines in athletics for many decades.
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Moses went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, on a scholarship, majoring in physics and industrial engineering and running on the track team. Morehouse did not have its track, he trained and ran at public high school facilities throughout the city. Moses initially competed primarily in the 120-yard hurdles and 440-yard sprint. He had only run one 400 m hurdles race before March 1976, but once he focused on the sport, he showed tremendous development. Moses, who stood 6’2″, was known for his signature stride pattern of 13 steps between each hurdle.
Moses was selected to represent the United States in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. In his debut international competition, Moses defeated compatriot Mike Shine for the gold medal while also setting a new world mark of 47.63 seconds. Moses lost to West Germany’s Harald Schmid on August 26, 1977, in Berlin, after setting his own world record the year before at Drake Stadium in a time of 47.45 seconds. In the 400 m hurdles, this was his fourth loss. Moses beat Schmid by 15 meters the following week in Düsseldorf, and he didn’t lose another race for nine years, nine months, and nine days. Moses made the 1980 U.S. Olympic squad but was unable to participate because of the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott.
Nevertheless, he was awarded one of the 461 Congressional Gold Medals that were given to athletes. Moses was chosen to deliver the Olympic Oath at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, but he forgot the words mid-presentation. He went on to win his second gold medal at the Olympics. Moses had won 122 straight races, set the world record twice more, won three World Cup championships, a World Championship gold medal, and two Olympic gold medals by the time American Danny Harris beat him in Madrid on June 4, 1987. After losing to Harris, he went on to win ten consecutive races before winning his second world title in Rome in August of the same year. Moses came in third place in the final 400m hurdles race of his life at the Seoul Olympics 1988.
| Event | Total | Gold | Silver | Bronze |
| Olympic Games | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| World Championships | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| IAAF World Cup | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Goodwill Games | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Moses was born in the United States on August 31, 1955, in Dayton, Ohio. His father served in the Tuskegee Airmen. Moses is a vegetarian, a peace activist, and a humanitarian. From 1986 until 1988, while still in the prime of his running career, he suffered from an untreated ruptured disc, which was revealed years later by MRI. Julian, Moses’s son, is a volleyball player. Moses sustained two catastrophic brain injuries within months in 2017, but got recovered.
Edwin Moses during his training (Moses in a file photo; Credits - World Athletics)
Edwin Moses in action in a training session (Moses in a file photo; Credits - Olympics.com)
Edwin Moses (Moses in a file photo)
Edwin Moses in action during Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984 (Moses in a file photo; Credits - Twitter)