To Moses, Perfection Is Ultimate Hurdle : After 109 Straight Wins and 2 Golds, There’s Little Else in Path to Conquer

When you’ve won everything there is to win--an Olympic gold medal, a world championship, another Olympic gold medal, 109 straight races--what else is there?

For Edwin Moses, there is the challenge of the perfect race.

“I think there are only two or three races during the season where I really have what I would call complete control,” Moses said during an interview Tuesday in Newport Beach. “I never know when it’s going to be. I can feel good before a race and then run a bad race, or I can not feel so good and run a good race.

“A perfect race is hard to describe. In the 400 hurdles, you’re always involved in correcting mistakes. So it’s only twice a year, maybe in the middle-to-late season, when I have the type of control where I can run the race that I would like to run. I never know when that time is going to be.”

To some, perfection simply means winning. To others, it means winning at the highest level. To Moses, it has nothing to do with winning. Victory is merely the result of running the perfect race.

When finishing first has become predictable, almost boring, an athlete has to find new goals, new ways of staying sharp. Lacking serious challenges from the outside, Moses has turned inward. He provides his own competition. For surfers, it’s the ultimate wave. For Moses, it’s the ultimate 400-meter hurdles.

Can he tell before or during a race that everything is clicking? That perfection is near?

“Sometimes, in the middle of a race,” he said. “But after the race is the only time you can really tell, and that’s based on what kind of time you get.”

The 400 hurdles is a fast race--Moses’ world-record time is 47.02 seconds--and there is little opportunity to run it and analyze it at the same time. It is difficult, in other words, to actually feel what you’re experiencing.

“I’ve hit my knee on hurdles and never felt it,” Moses said. “Maybe an hour later, I see a little cut on my knee or something like that.

“Everything happens so quickly that you really don’t have a chance to remember what happened. All you can remember is that you were running, you were hurdling. I guess in the back of your mind you count down the 10th hurdle, ninth, eighth, one more hurdle to go, that type of thing. You very rarely hear the crowd because of the wind that’s going past your head.”

Is there a moment when, suspended over a hurdle, it feels like flying? Is there enough time to be aware of moving through the air, momentarily free of the earth?

Not really, according to Moses.

“When you’re in the air, you’re concentrating on coming down so much that you really don’t remember being there,” he said. “It’s a strange feeling, running that far and over those hurdles. Everything is really happening fast; there’s really only like 3 1/2 seconds between hurdles.

“I break it down into about three segments--the start of the race to the first two hurdles, then from the second hurdle to about the seventh hurdle, and then the finish.

“The finish usually is the most critical part of it. Everyone’s concentrating on the finish. Most of the guys can run a comparable race for the first five or six hurdles. All of the guys have the speed to be able to run as fast as I run over the first five hurdles. I think the difference is at the end of the race.”

Moses has not been beaten since 1977, but it is doubtful he could have accomplished more than he has if there had been more competition.

“I’ve been pushed in many of the races, but I have to run hard regardless of whether someone’s pushing me or not,” he said. “That’s really why I’ve been able to improve and stay on top so long. I have to push myself. Even if the race is relatively slow, or I win by five yards or 10 yards, I still have to run a hard race.”

So, the search for perfection goes on, but each season it gets a little tougher. Winning is no more difficult than before. Keeping things interesting is.

“I (still) enjoy it,” Moses said with at least some conviction. “I changed my training around this year to really vary it a lot more than before, just to make it more interesting. Most athletes are always changing their training around to make it as interesting as it can be.”

In May, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Moses injured his right knee while training on a wet track, and last month he reinjured it. He says it is likely to be August at the earliest before he is able to seek his 110th straight victory.

“The injury is a tricky injury because there’s not a lot of healing that takes place,” he said. “The area that was hurt is right where the cartilage and the ligament attach. It kind of separated there, and neither of those two things grow, so it’s really a matter of time.

“There’s nothing extraordinary that can be done to make it heal faster. It’s a patience kind of deal. The main thing I’m concerned about is keeping from reinjuring it and needing surgery or something like that. Right now, there’s nothing like that that’s indicated.”

The injury is frustrating. So is the flap that developed over comments made recently by Andre Phillips, who won the national championship in the 400-meter hurdles at Indianapolis last month in Moses’ absence. Phillips charged that Moses would avoid racing both him and Danny Harris, the Olympic silver medalist, later this season in order to protect his streak.

Moses said that Phillips has since recanted. He indicated that rather than Phillips being the source, the accusation was being made by meet promoters with an ax to grind.

“This is what he (Phillips) heard from some meet organizers,” Moses said. “I’m in the business of track and field. Meet organizers are on the other side of the tables. Rumors get started that way, and I think there’s really nothing I can do about it. Someone can say anything they want about me and in some cases it’ll be reported. I think that his comments are just one of those things.

“What he said later was that he was misunderstood and that he had gotten his information second- or third-hand. It was one of those type of deals.”

Is there any residual anger, bad blood or whatever?

“None that I know of,” Moses said. “I just pick up the paper and read it like everyone else.”

So much for that rivalry. For Moses, it’s back to searching for the perfect race.

Track Notes

Edwin Moses, accompanied by his wife, Myrella, was in Newport Beach Tuesday to help promote Sunday’s Bastille Day 8-kilometer run. The race, proceeds of which will benefit United Cerebral Palsy’s Infant Care Center in Santa Ana, will begin at 8 a.m. at the Meridien Hotel in Newport Beach. More than 500 entries have been received, among them one from Polly Plumer, UCLA middle-distance runner.