Edwin Moses

Edwin Moses, 30, twice an Olympic gold medalist in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles,has one of the greatest winning streaks in sports history. Last year, he earned publicity of another kind when he was arrested on--then acquitted of--a charge of soliciting an undercover policewoman posing as a prostitute. He will risk his uninterrupted string of 109 victories in the hurdles at the Goodwill Games, which begin Saturday in Moscow. Q: What is the thrill of running hurdles? A: Competition. When I started, I had no idea that I would ever become world class. No way that I thought I could make a career and a living, and own everything I have, because of track and field. I just did it for a hobby, really, just to get away from the academic world. I was the most unlikely guy, and I became Olympic champion in essentially four months, from the time I first ran the 400-meter hurdles to the 1976 Olympic Games. But I just trained with guys who were dedicated (at Morehouse College in Atlanta), and we didn’t have much of a program, but we worked out twice a day. When ’76 came around, we had three guys with the potential to make it, and I was one of them. Q: How have you adjusted to the prominence it brought you? A: Well, it took me a long time to get the kind of positive publicity that I deserve--in fact, from 1976 until around 1983. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the Olympic Games were going to be in the United States. I was world record holder, Olympic champion. Track and field was becoming a more recognizable sport here in America. Q: You were at the pinnacle--a gold medal in the Olympics, Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. Then came your arrest, trial and, in February, 1985, your acquittal. Looking back, how do you assess those events? A: I certainly don’t get up in the morning and think about it. Everything I do is looking toward the future. My main problem right now is getting back in competition. The solution to that is training, so that’s all I really care about. Everything else is secondary. There are so many people who go through so much more--losing family members, real tragedies. Even though I felt it was a tragedy for me at the time, now I realize that it was just one of those things that could happen to anybody. I feel fortunate that I’m here and still able to compete and to do what I love to do and keep a positive outlook on life. Because that’s what people want to see from an individual like me. Had it (the arrest) happened five, six years before, it probably wouldn’t have been a major deal. You know, things were going great professionally at the time. I had a lot of stress in my life, because I was trying to juggle a competition career and be involved in the politics of the sport and the business of it as well. Q: How did you react to the first news reports about your arrest?

A: I felt very hurt and very exposed. My family were the first people to rush to support me--my wife (Myrella), my mom, my brothers--so I never felt alone. The thing that hurt me most was just the emotional stress that it caused and the unfairness of the impression of what happened--the way it was reported and so forth. Q: Which aspect of the reporting bothered you the most? A: Just the entire thing. Most people tell me now and have told me in the past they thought it was way out of proportion. They thought it was very silly; most people really never believed it. They couldn’t believe the amount of attention that was put on it for the nature of what it was. Most people thought that the mere accusation really didn’t give me the opportunity to present my case. Q: Do you feel that the judicial process that set the case in motion was fair? A: I think everyone involved did their job, the job they were supposed to do. Whether it was good or bad is not up to me to say. But I think it was obvious that from the way the whole situation developed--the way the whole episode was leaked to the press by the (L.A.) Police Department--I think they (the police and the city attorney’s office) were in a position where, after that occurred, they had to press charges. They brought in the best D.A. (Deputy City Atty. Michael J. Guarino) they could find. After the case was closed and the jury was out, he told me he hadn’t lost a (prostitution) case yet. In the six days that it took them to press charges, there were probably three different, conflicting police reports that came out, and so I think that, based on those facts, that’s how I won the case. Q: If you hadn’t had the money to spend on your defense, what do you think would have happened? A: I’ll put it this way: Based on my experiences being able to afford proper legal representation--I’m not going to get into how much it costs (according to the Washington Post, Moses’ defense cost $100,000) but I could say that there are probably some people who didn’t have those benefits who are found guilty of different things. I’m sure there are people who had good legal representation who get off. Q: Were you happy with the jury? A: We went through a long process to try to determine what kind of people you probably didn’t want on a jury. It was a very educated group of people--college professors, bankers, businessmen, one guy was a postal worker. There was only one black. Everybody was capable of dealing with information on a factual basis. I just wanted to deal with the facts. I wasn’t going in there with a sob story and try to bargain for a verdict. No deal on that. So it worked out in my favor, I think, because the case that was presented was factual and because most of the facts were submitted by the police and the D. A. Q: What kind of support did you receive from friends? A: All the people who’ve been very close to me were the first people to call. I got support from Peter Ueberroth. He was one of the first people to call. I got an immediate telegram from Mr. ( Juan Antonio) Samaranch; he’s president of the International Olympic Committee. Jack Kelly, who was president of the U.S. Olympic Committee and has since passed away, sent me a very nice letter. I got calls from Howard Cosell, from the chairman of Adidas, all of the people I’ve done business with--my sponsors, Coca-Cola, people from Kodak, people from Sheraton. I got support from a lot of people I didn’t even know. Q: Did you lose any endorsements? A: No endorsements were canceled; they were put on hold until the sponsors determined what the public’s perception of what happened to me was. Right now, I’m in negotiations for a serious part in a movie, and I’m working with Adidas, Turner Broadcasting and Mobil Oil. Q: How was your marriage affected? A: One of our biggest problems has always been a lack of enough space. We moved to a new place in November (in Newport Beach). I realized that that was causing a lot of stress--not having enough room. When you have two people in a small place and both are very independent with a very dynamic life style, the potential for problems is there. But I think we’ve both done a good job of keeping things under control. Because it’s not a normal marriage by any means. Everything was devoted to me from the time we met in 1980. We got married in 1982, and for 1981, ‘82, ‘83, ’84 and ‘85, everything was pretty much focused on me and running. But now that stage is finished. Now she’s doing what she wants to do; she’s a full-time artist. I take care of the track and field, she loves her art, and at the end of the day we spend our time together. Q: Is there life after track? A: Right now, my life is track, and I believe that once you begin to think about retirement, your body follows your mind. So I don’t even think about it. I know that after I finish, with my background in engineering and all the business that I’ve learned, I have a lot of interests now that I never knew I would be able to pursue. I might go into real estate development. I think I’m going to be involved in medical research; I have a friend who’s a doctor and we’re working on some papers on training. And because of my involvement in amateur sports, I’m going to continue my dedication to other athletes. I think I might have some future in dealing with athletes and educating them in other aspects of life, other things they can do outside of athletics. I might run for office. Q: Which office? A: It’s a long-term goal. It might be 20 years--one to 20 years--before I do that. I’ll probably do a lot of other things first. I think that I’m very fortunate to be who I am and where I am, and to do what I do. I think (British decathlete) Daley Thompson summed it up when he said, “You just have to be lucky when you can do something better than anyone else and make a living at it--when you can be a champion.”