Edwin Moses

Edwin Moses
Edwin Moses (2010)
Full name	Edwin Corley Moses
nation	United States
birthday	August 31, 1955
place of birth	Dayton , Ohio
size	186 cm
Weight	72 kg
Career
discipline	Hurdles
Best performance	47.02 s ( 400 m hurdles )
society	Morehouse College / Team Adidas
Trainer	Leroy Walker
status	resigned
End of career	1988
Medal table
Olympic games 2 × 0 × 1 × World championships 2 × 0 × 0 × Athletics World Cup 3 × 0 × 0 × Goodwill Games 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Montreal 1976 400 m hurdles gold Los Angeles 1984 400 m hurdles bronze Seoul 1988 400 m hurdles  World championships gold Helsinki 1983 400 m hurdles gold Rome 1987 400 m hurdles Athletics World Cup gold Düsseldorf 1977 400 m hurdles gold Montreal 1979 400 m hurdles gold Rome 1981 400 m hurdles  Goodwill Games gold Moscow 1986 400 m hurdles

Edwin Corley Moses (born August 31, 1955 in Dayton , Ohio ) is a retired American athlete. He started in the 400 meter hurdles and dominated this route in the 1970s and 1980s. Among other things, he was twice Olympic champion , twice world champion and set a new world record four times .

Life

childhood and education

Edwin Moses, who grew up in Dayton, was born as the second of three sons to the teacher couple Irving and Gladys Moses. His parents had played sports themselves - Moses' father was a football player, his mother had played tennis. He first came into contact with athletics at Fairview High School in his hometown. However, Moses, who once had to change schools due to race riots, was considered inconspicuous in his youth and was ignored by baseball and basketball coaches. He received a comprehensive school education and was interested in music, art and the natural sciences. After graduating from high school, Moses moved to the renowned Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he studied physics until 1978. It was only during his final college year in 1975 that he wanted to take part in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal . The hobby runner tried to improve his hurdles technique with theoretical physical methods and found in the militant Baptist pastor Reverend Lloyd Jackson his first supervisor and advisor.

Dominance in the 1970s and 1980s

Moses in 1987

Moses first drew attention to himself in March 1976 in the 400-meter hurdles at the Florida Relays in Gainesville . He began to train with Leroy Walker and achieved a never before mastered 13 rhythm between the hurdles on his special route. Between 1975 and 1987, Moses was to dominate the 400-meter hurdles and remained unbeaten in 122 consecutive races over this distance. At the beginning of his career, he was often associated with the black liberation movement through his outward appearance with dark sunglasses and a necklace, but he firmly rejected this. His successes include the Olympic victories in Montreal in 1976 and Los Angeles in 1984 , while he could not take part in the 1980 Games in Moscow due to the boycott of the western states. At the first World Championships in Helsinki in 1983 , he won the title on his parade route as well as four years later in Rome in 1987 . Between 1976 and 1983 he set the world record four times, most recently on August 31, 1983 at the International Evening Sports Festival in Koblenz with 47.02 seconds. This time was only undercut by Kevin Young nine years later at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona . There were also victories at the Athletics World Cup ( 1977 , 1979 , 1981 ) and the Goodwill Games (1986).

At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles , he made a promise at the opening ceremony for the Olympic oath . In the same year Moses was by the magazine Sports Illustrated for Athlete of the Year chosen. Moses' winning streak broke in June 1987 in a competition in Madrid when he had to admit defeat to his nine years younger teammate Danny Harris (47.56 s) in 47.69 seconds and fell at a sports festival in Paris. After his second World Cup victory, a year later he traveled again as a favorite to the Olympic Games in Seoul . There, Moses clearly dominated the preliminary and semi-finals before he had to be satisfied with bronze in the final behind his compatriot Andre Phillips (47.19 s) and the Senegalese Amadou Dia Ba (47.23 s) in 47.56 seconds. In the same year he ended his sporting career. Later announced comebacks for 1991 and 2004, he did not follow.

Private life and engagement after the end of his running career

In 1982 Edwin Moses, who also acquired the pilot's license, married Myrella Bordt from Berlin . He separated from the costume designer of Greek-Ethiopian descent in 1991. After his athletics career, he got into a personal crisis, reorganized his life and in 1994 earned a master's degree in business administration from Pepperdine College in Malibu (California) . He also tried his hand at braking in the two-man bobsleigh . He reached a third place at the World Cup in Winterberg in 1990.

Moses later held official positions and was committed to clean sport; so he belonged to the National Olympic Committee of the USA (USOC) of the anti-doping commission. Until 1996, Moses was also a member of the IOC's Athletes' Commission. However, he withdrew from these offices. As chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, he presents the Laureus World Sports Award every year .

Awards

• 2006: Award "Athletes with a Heart" at the German Sports Press Ball
• 2009: Sports for Peace Award
• 2012: Induction into the IAAF Hall of Fame
• 2018: Laureus World Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement

Web links

Commons : Edwin Moses  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Edwin Moses in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Edwin Moses . In: Internationales Sportarchiv 32/2003 from July 28, 2003, supplemented by news from MA-Journal up to week 26/2012 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).