Sport: Athletics

Hometown: Dayton, OH

Biography:  Edwin Moses, the possessor of one bachelor's of science degree in physics, one master's in business administration, two Olympic gold medals and 107 consecutive victories in 400-meter hurdles finals. This athletic marvel enjoyed a run of nine years, nine months and nine days between losses. Four times he broke the world record. Neither his competitors nor his dreams could keep up with his performances. Bounding over the 10 three-foot hurdles, taking unprecedented 13 steps between hurdles instead of the usual 14, he was a remarkable combination of speed, grace and stamina. Moses made winning look so easy. "It just happens that my slow is faster than most athletes' fast," he said. He was born on Aug. 31, 1955 in Dayton, Ohio. With both his parents being educators, Moses took academics more seriously than most youngsters did, though he also competed in sports. Moses turned to track and gymnastics after playing football and basketball. "I found that I enjoyed individual sports much more," he said. Rather than seeking an athletic scholarship, Moses accepted an academic scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, majoring in physics and engineering.

Though the school had a track team, it didn't have a track. Mostly, Moses competed in the 110-meter high hurdles, 400 meters, and 4 x 100 relays. Just once before late March 1976 did he enter a 400-hurdles race. But once he started with the event, he made unbelievable advancement with his huge and economical 9-foot-9 stride and qualified for the Olympics. As a 20-year-old, unknown scholar-athlete from a renowned black college, he burst upon the international scene at the Montreal Olympics. Not only did Moses win the gold medal in his first international meet, he set a world record of 47.64 seconds. His eight-meter victory over Mike Shine was the largest winning margin in the event in the Olympics. Despite being the only American male track athlete to win an individual gold medal, Moses was not received with warmth by the public. He broke his own world record with a 47.45 at the Pepsi Invitational, an AAU meet, in 1977. On Aug. 26, 1977 in Berlin, he lost to Harald Schmid, his fourth defeat in the 400 hurdles. What made this race so special is that this would be his last loss for almost a decade. The next week he began his amazing 107-finals winning streak (122 races overall. In 1978, he was prevented from winning his second Olympic gold medal when President Carter ordered the U.S. to boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980. The 6-foot-2, 180-pound Moses had to settle for breaking his own world record again, running an incredible 47.13 on July 13 in Milan.

On his 28th birthday, Moses raced to another world record, 47.02, a hundredth of a second faster than his dream. The record stood until 1992. At the 1984 Olympics, Moses became the second man to win two 400 hurdles. After retiring from track, the competitive Moses switched to bobsledding. In a late 1990 World Cup race at Winterburg, Germany, he and Brian Shimer took a bronze medal for two-man teams. Moses finished seventh at the 1991 World Championships. In 1994, Moses received his Master's from Pepperdine and was elected into the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame. Since 1997 he has been president of the International Amateur Athletic Association. When asked how he would like to be remembered, Moses answered, "Hopefully, as the guy nobody could beat. Maybe in the years to come, people will understand the things I have accomplished and realize, 'Wow, this guy was really something. Nobody's ever going to do that again.' "