The Gospel According to Moses
A Track & Field legend offers his take ahead of the World Championships in Osaka

Edwin Moses and tennis star Kimiko Date display the Laureus Foundation book Let the Children Play

Courtesy of IWC

Runners competing at the upcoming World track and Field Championships in Osaka (Aug 25-Sep 2) would do well to heed the advice of Edwin Moses’ mother. After her son suffered a bout of food poisoning that had destroyed training plans ahead of the 1987 World Championships, Mother Moses told the coachless superstar how to win: “Get out fast and run like hell.”

That was almost the only coaching he needed in his career. You see, double-Olympic gold medalist and two-time world champion didn’t have a coach; he figured out how to run hurdles by himself. Not only is Moses one of the world’s best-ever athletes­—he achieved the incredible feat of winning 122 consecutive 400-meter hurdles races—he’s also one of the most educated. No sports scholarships for this guy; instead, he earned himself an academic scholarship. Later in life, he earned an MBA.

Today, track and field seems to be going the way of cycling, with drugs tainting more and more competitors so that the public no longer knows who is clean and who is not—and the danger is they will care less and less until they just give up caring at all.

The 52-year-old Moses, an early proponent of out-of-competition drug testing, visited Japan earlier this month in one of the other high-profile roles he has assumed since retiring from the track 20 years ago. Moses is now the chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, which combines recognizing the world’s best athletes through the Laureus Sports Awards with sharing a belief that sports can change the world. The Academy consists of 44 of the world’s most famous athletes, from Michael Johnson to Martina Navratilova, who help the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation in charitable projects around the world.

“The theme in Laureus is using sport for social change,” Moses told reporters at a dinner event in Tokyo. “We want to make a difference, and we feel fortunate about the fact that we were the lucky ones.”

Of course, some people make their own luck, and Moses had to make his. At 52, the 185cm athlete still looks like a world-beater, but when he was young, he says, he was one of the smallest kids in his class. He quit football, failed at basketball and opted for track. Then he went to a college that didn’t have one. He never looked for excuses and certainly didn’t expect to be a star, and Moses, who is black, doesn’t buy into the theory that some races are genetically superior or inferior.

“In terms of genetics, in the United States, some Caucasians don’t think they can sprint, but in the Czech Republic or Russia you have the best sprinters in the world, so I don’t believe this has a genetic explanation,” he says.

Moses also says it is not an excuse that Japanese can use. Actually, Moses doesn’t care much for excuses of any variety.

“I went to a college with no track, no trainers and no weights or anything like that,” he recalls. “My philosophy was: give me sweatpants, show me a track, and you compete with what you’ve got.”

But today, he says, track has lost its character. “Nowadays, personalities don’t exist. Michael Johnson had it, Marion Jones had it, but not many other athletes really have it.”

“Liu Xiang has it,” Moses says of the Chinese high-hurdler. “He’s going to be the star of the show [in Osaka].” The Japanese will have a chance to cheer on local personalities Shingo Suetsugu, Dai Tamesue, Koji Murofushi and Kumiko Ikeda.

Assuming their genes don’t get in the way.

The World Track and Field Championships take place Aug 25-Sep 2 at Nagai Stadium in Osaka. Call 06-6739-9978 for details.