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Following his World Record and World Cup win in 1977, Edwin Moses
continued to dominate the 400m Hurdles event in the following years,
invariably recording his fastest times in the major competitions. He
was undefeated during 1978, recording the year's fastest time of
47.94sec, and two other times faster then second-ranked Harald Schmid
(West Germany). In 1979, at Montreal, he repeated his 1977 World Cup
success , beating the second-placed Schmid by over a second in 47.53sec,
only 0.08sec outside his World Record.
In 1980, Moses was arguably in
the best form of his career and considered a certainty to successfully
defend his Olympic crown, but unfortunately, he was denied this
opportunity due to the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Three weeks
before the Moscow Games, on 3 July at Milan, Moses again lowered his
World Record with a time of 47.13sec, relegating Schmid to a distant
second. On 3 August, at Berlin, he narrowly missed breaking the record
again, beating the hapless Schmid again in a time of 47.17sec. By
comparison, the winning time of Olympic gold medallist Volker Beck (East
Germany) at Moscow on was 48.70sec.
In 1981, Moses produced all six
times run under 48 seconds during the year, including a time of 47.14sec
at Lausanne on 14 July, missing his World Record by a tantalising one
hundredth of a second. On 4 September of that year, at Rome, he won his
third successive World Cup title in 47.37sec, beating Olympic champion
Beck by 15 metres. By the end of that year, Moses had recorded the
fastest 14 times ever run for the 400m Hurdles, and he had extended his
winning streak since losing to Schmid at Berlin in August 1977 to 72
successive races and 66 successive finals. (Ron Casey)
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