Summer Olympic athletes competed this week in the 400-meter hurdle finals in Paris. Americans took gold in both the men's and women's competitions.
At the 1976 and 1984 Olympics, American and Dayton native Edwin C. Moses won gold medals in that event.
This spring, Moses spoke with two track athletes at Meadowdale High School in West Dayton about his Olympic experience.
Here are excerpts from that interview, which was conducted by Dayton Youth Radio producers Courion Russell and Floyd Ruttagah.
The following transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Courion Russell: Out of every event, because I'm a sprinter and I jump, I just want to know why you chose the 400-meter hurdles because it looks like one of the hardest events at a track meet.
Edwin C. Moses: It is. In the 110 m hurdles, we had a ton of experienced guys who had gone to the Olympics before and had won NCAA championships before. I had never run any big meets like that in my life.
I was at a small Division III college, Morehouse College, and we didn't even have a track at that time. I used to jump fences just to work out every day.
It was definitely the toughest event, but my coach and I said, 'Well if you can do well at this thing, I think you can advance faster.'
Also, when I was in college, I was studying physics and engineering, so I had a really good scientific background in biomechanics. I knew how to train well. I developed my own training program. I have my diet correct. I had a very good stretching program. I had a really, really good cross-country program to develop power. I learned how to sprint and became a really good sprinter, a technical sprinter. So, I was just lucky that I picked the right event at the right time.
Russell: In 1984, in Los Angeles. What was going through your mind when you false started?
Moses: Well, when I false started, if you look at that videotape, there were a lot of cameras on the side of the track. And I was in lane six, which meant that I was two lanes from the outside. And these cameras were about, I'd say, about five meters away from the outside of the track. And there must have been about 50 or 100 guys sitting right there. Everyone wants to get a picture of the athletes coming out of the blocks. So when the starter said, 'to your marks,' he said, 'set,' these huge cameras with the big telephoto lens and motor drives on them started taking pictures. And it sounds almost like a machine gun. Clack, clack, clack, clack. And when I heard that, I jumped because that's what I was supposed to do. The first concussive sound that you hear, you're supposed to go anything that sounds like a gun or even a false start, even if the gun doesn't go off.
And so they didn't charge me with the false start. They moved the guys back from the track, and I was cursing like Sam Jackson to the guys on the side of the track. I was very upset, but I knew I had to stay calm because everything was up for grabs.
I was just lucky that I picked the right event at the right time.
Floyd Ruttagah: Did you have specific songs that you listened to before your races?
Moses: That was impossible back then; no one had any kind of device that was portable that would let you listen to music.
Ruttagah: You didn't have like a radio?
Moses: No. No one did that back then. People were 100% focused. It wasn't until like 3 or 4 years later and into the 80s, that people started walking around with boomboxes. You know what those are, right?
Ruttagah: I've never heard of them.
Moses: Yeah, it's like a big, portable radio tape recorder. It was probably like a foot and a half long and a foot tall and 3 or 4in thick. And it was a portable device. You had to put, like, 6 or 8 batteries in it. It had speakers on it. But no one had anything like that at races.
It wasn't until 1978 that Sony came out with what they call the Walkman, the first Walkman. It was a very portable device, not too much bigger than a cassette, and it had earphones. Later on in my career, in 1978, I purchased a Walkman in Sweden and had cassette tapes. But no, you couldn't run with those things. It's not like it is now.
So when I trained, I used to have two little speakers that you could buy, and I put them out when I worked out. But not at track meets. That technology didn't even exist.
Russell & Ruttagah: Thanks for your time, Mr. Moses.
Moses: It was my pleasure.
Dayton Youth Radio is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. Russell and Ruttagah's interview with Moses won second place in the Spring 2024 Miami Valley Tech Prep Showcase Podcasting Contest.
