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Edwin Moses missed the entire 1982 season due to injury and in his
absence, his old rival Harald Schmid (West Germany) had topped the
year's rankings in the 400m Hurdles, improving his personal best to
47.48sec. Any suggestion that Schmid might start to challenge Moses'
dominance were quickly dispelled when Moses won the 1983 US national
championships on 19 June in 47.84sec. The following month he travelled
to Europe to prepare for the 1st World Championships to be held in
Helsinki in August. Predictably, the two semi-finals at Helsinki were
won respectively by Moses (48.11sec) and Schmid (48.57sec).
In the
final on August 9, Moses was hoping for a good lane draw to help him
possibly break his World Record but was disappointed when the random
draw put him in the second lane. Nevertheless, he assumed complete
control of the race from the start and despite the fact that his left
shoelace worked loose near the halfway mark, he surged away (see photo above)
from the field after the seventh hurdle to win in 47.50sec, with
perennial second place getter Schmid (48.61sec) over a second behind.
This was by no means the end of Moses' European campaign in 1983. On 24
August, at the Weltklasse meet in Zurich, he beat a quality field
including Schmid (5th) in 47.37sec, and four days later in Cologne, he
again defeated Schmid (3rd) in a time of 47.43sec.
These two times were
respectively the sixth and seventh fastest times in history, and only
Edwin Moses had ever run faster. All this was only a prelude to the
meet in Koblenz held 3 days after Cologne on 31 August. In this race
Moses again won easily, beating compatriot Andre Phillips, in a time of
47.02sec, his career best and his fourth World Record. (Ron Casey)
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