Edwin Moses

Moses grew up in Dayton, Ohio, the middle son of Gladys and Irving Moses. Irving Moses had been a football center during his college career at Kentucky State, and later taught math and science and was principal of an elementary school. Gladys Moses was a supervisor of instruction for the Dayton public school system. Naturally, Moses' parents emphasized academic achievement, particularly in science, and sports came in a distant second. Moses, who like his father had a scientific mind, often read the encyclopedia for

Edwin Moses

fun as a child. When he was older, he and his brothers Irving Jr. and Vincent dissected frogs, launched homemade rockets, and made models of volcanoes and cars. Moses also played the saxophone and enjoyed creating art.

When his local school auditorium was set on fire, probably by students, Moses chose to be bused to another school four miles away, where he was one of only 20 African Americans in a student body of 800. In summer school, he took science and math courses for extra credit, and often tutored other students. Although he was on the track team, he was small—5'8" and 135 pounds—and was not considered a potential athlete. "Track was almost incidental," he told Curry Kirkpatrick in Sports Illustrated.

Moses attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, a traditionally African-American institution, on an academic scholarship. He studied physics and engineering, and he was also on the track team. Unfortunately, the school had no track, and the athletes had to train wherever they could. At college, he was called the "Bionic Man" because of the intensity of his training, as well as the intensity of his studying; he would later apply his scientific, mathematical and analytical talents to his athletic career. While at college he grew, eventually reaching 6'2". His legs were fully half of his height, a trait runners call "split high," and this trait would later help make him a world-record hurdler.

In 1975, Moses began talking about going to the Olympics. He did not yet have a plan; his talk was more intuition than anything else. And in March of 1976, at the Florida Relays, Moses ran times of 13.7 in the high hurdles, 46.1 in the 400 meters, and 50.1 in the intermediate hurdles. Although he didn't win any of these races, his ability was obvious to Olympic coach Leroy Walker, who attended the race. Walker told Kirkpatrick, "His size and speed; his base, the ability to carry the stride; his 'skim,' what we call the measurement of the stride over the hurdle—he had it all."

One secret of Moses' success was his stride, and his ability to run with the same stride length even when he tired at the end of a race. Hurdlers try to make their steps between hurdles smooth and even, so that as the runner approaches the hurdle, he soars over it without breaking stride or "chopping" his steps. Moses' long legs and 9-foot, 8-inch stride, as well as his endurance, gave him the unique ability to run thirteen strides between hurdles throughout a 400-meter race, even at the end, while all other hurdlers ran thirteens at the beginning of a race, shortening their steps and increasing to fourteen or fifteen strides between hurdles as they became tired. In addition, Moses' long legs allowed him to simply float over the hurdles; as his wife, Myrella Moses, later told Kirkpatrick, "Edwin's advantage is that the other fellas actually have to jump over the hurdles."

At the NCAA Division III championships, held in Chicago in 1976, Moses fell when his sunglasses fogged up. Later in the year, he ran at the AAU meet at UCLA against top hurdlers. He was in the lead, flying along, and tried to look back to see where the other runners were. That one moment of distraction made him hit the seventh and ninth hurdles and stumble over the tenth—but he finished in fourth place, with a time of 48.99. From then on, he never again looked back during a race.