Edwin Moses always loved the sport of track and field. But reaching the Olympics always seemed like a tall order.
At a young age, Moses was a lot smaller than the other runners. In high school, he was 5-feet-7 tall and weighed 117 pounds and frequently found himself at the back of the pack during races. But as he grew physically, he got faster and progessively found himself leading races, rather than trailing.
Then at Morehouse College, Moses – a physics and engineer major – used math to calculate that he needed to take exactly 13 steps between hurdles to maximize efficiency in the 400-meter hurdles.
“It just really made sense when you’re out on the track and you’re dealing with running 400m worth of hurdles, 10 hurdles, then it behooves you to kind of find the shortest way or the most efficient way,” Moses told CNN.
Using that methodology, Moses would go onto become a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a two-time world champion.
For nine years, nine months and nine days Moses was unbeaten in races, winning 122 in a row. No other athlete has come close to breaking that record.
While the sports world was consumed with his unprecedented winning streak, Moses was not. “I just went about my business, did my program and let the winning take care of itself. I always knew that I was 100% ready no matter what.”
At the height of his popularity, Moses – who was once considered shy and to have a quiet personality – became a “big mouth,” he says, as he fought against racism, performance enhancing drugs and unfair compensation in his sport.
His activism put his amateur eligibility at risk and made him the subject of high-profile scandals. But he believes speaking out as he did back in the 1970s and 1980s has benefited Olympic athletes today.
“The reason that they’re all making money today is because the fact that I sacrificed my potential eligibility for the Olympic Games and could have been banned and was investigated for taking money when it wasn’t lawful,” Moses, 69, said. “That’s why track and field and swimming, gymnastics and all of them can do anything today.”
Fifty years after he burst onto the international stage, Moses is still using sports as a vehicle for change.
For 20 years, he was the inaugural chairman of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, an organization that helps children overcome struggles in their lives. Today, while in a different role with Laureus, he remains committed to using sports to make a difference in the lives of children all over the world.
Moses’ journey on and off the field is chronicled in the new documentary, “Moses – 13 Steps,” produced by Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman. It is a story the athlete has wanted to tell for nearly 20 years.
Moses and I spoke at length about his journey.
Why did you want to participate in this documentary?
In 2005, I was at the Laureus World Sports Awards. And Morgan was our special host and he introduced me and he said: ‘Edwin Moses, nine years, nine months, nine days, 122 races, Morehouse man, undefeated world champion, Olympic champion.’ And he said: ‘Why is there no film on Edwin Moses?’
And so, it became kind of something that I really wanted to do. And my friends quite frankly were demanding it.
And then later in 2020, right before the COVID epidemic started, I was approached by a film team out of Germany, Broadview TV. And we started discussing the possibility of doing a film. They’re an international boutique documentary firm and they understood the story because they’re Germans. A lot of my history of running track and the IOC and all those activities happened in Europe.
So that’s how the concept got started.
When the winning streak of 122 straight races ended in Madrid in 1987, how did that moment feel?
I was food poisoned that night, that whole week. So I really didn’t want to run. But I did and I ran faster than I had ever run that early in the season because I generally didn’t do a lot of early season meets and I waited for the European season, like June through October.
I could have lost any of the 122 races. I had run sick, had run injured and had I not hit that last hurdle, I would have won that race, 100%.
That one false step did me in that day. But I was not disappointed with the results. I was quite happy, the world championships were coming up about two months later, so I knew I was in tip-top condition. So it didn’t really matter to me. If you get your heart broken because you lose in track and field, you’re in the wrong sport.
Should politics be a part of sports?
It is a part of sports. I mean, sports has its own specific issues in politics. We see them all the time today. You have fights and spats over drug tests. You have fights and spats over eligibility where some athletes live in one country and want to switch to another country, over gender, over nationalism.
So it’s always there. And the United States, we’re the only Olympic committee in the world that doesn’t have a sports minister. So all these other countries, their sports is directly linked to their politics except ours. So it’s absolutely involved.
It has a lot to do with all the decisions that are made that we never hear about generally in public, the average person doesn’t know. But it’s all government driven behind the scenes, just not on the track. On the track and in the field, people think that it should be non-political and it is because of the nature of sports.
But behind the scenes politics is weighing heavily on everything that happens in the world of sports.
From where the Olympics are held, to where the football World Cup is held and everything in between, it’s all dictated by politics.
When Olympians John Carlos and Tommie Smith put their fists up in the air while on the podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, as a Black boy growing up in Dayton, Ohio, what did that moment mean to you?
You have to understand the perspective of the times. In the sixties, we had multiple assassinations. Robert Kennedy. John Kennedy. Medgar Evers. Malcolm X., Dr. Martin Luther King. We had the Vietnam War going on during the same time in the late sixties, early seventies.
We had the civil rights laws that were being drafted in ‘64 and ‘65, the March on Washington. So the United States was a very volatile place and there was a tremendous amount going on and I was a teeny bopper during that time.
At our age, 12, 13, 14, 15, we were beginning to understand what the world was about because you could see it on the news and what kind of constraints that we were under as Black kids still in segregated high schools in Dayton, Ohio.
When we saw Tommy and John, it was just great because we had an example right in our faces as to the power of African American men and their voice on the issues. Although theirs was a worldwide issue, everyone had their fists in the air. So it was great.
What does Morehouse mean to you?
Morehouse changed my life. I went there at a fantastic time to go there. When I was a student, no one was talking about the HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities) the way that they talk about them now.
I went at 17 years old as a little boy and came out the other end as a man. They taught us about leadership and academics and responsibility and gave us the confidence that we can go out into the world and accomplish anything in any area.
We didn’t have to worry about anyone concerned about why we were out of school, whether we were on academic welfare at the school. And we didn’t have to worry about anyone stabbing us in the back and everyone’s cheering for each other. So for me, it was the only atmosphere in which I could have thrived.
If I’d have gone to name the school and name the track program with all the best coaches and everything, there would have never been no Edwin Moses. It was that unique area and opportunity despite the fact that we had no track and had no field. That’s the kind of power that a Morehouse education can provide for you and give you the confidence that you can do anything even if it’s impossible.