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Not long after Edwin Moses figured out how to attack the solution to track's ultimate math problem, he transformed himself into the best hurdler in history. That, in turn, gave the engineer-turned-Olympic champion the platform to go after more difficult issues that, even today, more than 40 years later, nobody has totally untangled. The title to a new documentary on Moses, "13 Steps," pays homage to the then-revolutionary number of strides the track star took between the 10 barriers in the notoriously painful 400-meter hurdles — a race where he lined up 122 straight times over a span of 9 years, 9 months and 9 days without getting beat.
"Everyone's angry about something, but what can you do and what are you going to do?" Moses says in the movie, reflecting on the larger-than-sports role he assumed after becoming one of track's brightest lights in the 1970s and '80s. The film, which debuts to the public Saturday at his alma mater, Morehouse College, dissects Moses' role in three causes that remain unresolved: fair pay for athletes in track and the Olympics; doping; and racial equality in America. Born in 1955, Moses was 13 when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists on the medal stand at the Mexico City Olympics, gestures that made them pariahs for decades both inside the Olympic movement and out.
Those lessons put the world's best hurdler in no position to follow suit when he won in 1976. Some tried to portray his victory lap in Montreal with his white American teammate, Mike Shine, as something bigger, but as Moses says in an interview shortly after those Olympics, he..
. EDDIE PELLS AP national writer.
