He Turned a Hero Into Mere Mortal

No one was ever quite sure it was a good idea for Gene Tunney to beat Jack Dempsey that night in Chicago in 1927. Or for Jack Fleck to beat Ben Hogan in the Open in 1955. Or for Roger Maris to break Babe Ruth’s 60-homer record in 1961.

Should Rocky Marciano really have knocked out Joe Louis? Did Larry Holmes have to stop Muhammad Ali? Liked to see Ruth strike out with the bases loaded in his old age, did you? Willie Mays drop a fly ball? Happy when Bill Tilden couldn’t get anything on his serve anymore? You liked to see Red Grange or O. J. Simpson tackled in the end zone?

Then, how did it feel to see Andre Phillips beat Edwin Moses in the Olympics at Seoul last fall? Felt like the night Joe Louis’ head hit the ring floor at the Garden in 1951, did it? Did you not want to look?

That was the first race Moses had ever lost to Phillips and only the third to anyone since 1977. It was the first time he had ever lost in the Olympics, and he has been in them since Gerald Ford was President, the boycott year of 1980 being the only exception.

What Ruth was to baseball, Dempsey or Louis to boxing, Red Grange to football, or Hogan to golf, Edwin Moses was to track and field. He towered over his event, the way only the legends do.

He won 122 races in a row, to give you an idea. He commanded 5-figure fees per appearance. And he brought fame and notoriety to a sport that is often the orphan in the family of competitive athletics in this country.

So, why, then, did the West German also-ran hurdler, Harald Schmid, run up to Andre Phillips and embrace him almost tearfully as Phillips won the gold medal in Seoul in September? Why did Kevin Young, who had just missed a bronze medal himself, choose to run around the track in elation with Phillips after his great win?

Why did runner-up Amadou Dia Ba of Senegal exclaim not, “We won a medal!” but, “We beat him!” after it was over? Why did Phillips himself think not, “I won the gold!” but, “I finally beat Edwin!” as he circled the crowd?

Phillips had been trying to beat Edwin Moses since 1979. So had most of the rest of the world. Only one hurdler in the 400-meter race at this year’s Olympics had ever beaten Moses--Schmid in Lane 1 had done it in a so-what hurdles event way back in ’77.

But the one hurdler who didn’t go up to congratulate Phillips last September was the third-place finisher in the race--Edwin Moses himself. Moses even cut short the network broadcaster who came up to him, seeking a few words about his conqueror.

Of course, Edwin hasn’t had a lot of experience being a gracious loser. A guy who loses a race only every decade or so can’t be too sure what the occasion calls for, a simple “Nice race, guy!” or maybe, “You’re lucky I slipped,” or, “On steroids, are you?” So, Edwin didn’t stand on ceremony. He bugged out of there.

Maybe, he felt Andre hadn’t done himself any favors, that he had put himself at one with the other great mistake makers of history--Maris, Fleck, Holmes, Tunney or Bob Ford, the dirty little coward who laid Jesse James in his grave.

None of which explains why the rest of the cast was so jubilant when Moses, for the first time in his life, lost the big one.

It stems from the fact that hurdlers, as a class, have long held the notion that Edwin Moses has been ducking them, has been fattening his record with a diet of palookas like a pug who goes around fighting his chauffeur, or a golfer who only plays with guys who owe him money or their jobs.

Society as a whole was probably less thrilled to see that this Moses could no longer part the waters than were the rival hurdlers.

“I always congratulated him all those times he beat me,” Phillips says. “But he hasn’t spoken to me to this day. And we were in the same hotel in Seoul.”

Edwin not only wouldn’t speak to him, he wouldn’t run against him for the past 4 years, Andre insists.

“We would call up meet promoters and say we wanted to run the 400 hurdles and there would be this embarrassed silence and they would suggest we try another event. We were told, if we entered the event, Edwin would drop out and he, of course, was the big drawing card. If we insisted, Edwin would go to another meet.”

It was the contention of other hurdlers that this was Edwin’s way of padding his considerable reputation at no risk to himself.

“We would have to go to other meets and face prime competition, where we’d have to run 47s to win, and Edwin would run 49.2 someplace. And at the end of the season, we’d be all beat up and Edwin would be nice and fresh and still unbeaten.”

It was galling for Phillips, who had spent so many years chasing Moses that he began to feel like the Pharaoh’s army. He was always frustrated. Trying for the 1980 Olympic team, he was in a threatening second place when he crashed into the 10th and final hurdle, fell and lost all chance.

In the trials for the ’84 team, plagued by a virus that cost him weight and strength, he finished fourth.

When he recovered and began running as well as he ever had, Moses was nowhere to be found, Phillips says.

Andre will be running in the power-packed hurdles race at the Sunkist Invitational meet at the Sports Arena on Jan. 20. Moses will not be there--”He never runs the shorter hurdles indoors either,” Phillips notes--but Roger Kingdom, the gold medalist in the 110-meter hurdles, will compete.

Phillips began to get Moses in his gun sights at the Olympic trials in Indianapolis last summer.

“Now, we had meets he had to face us,” he remembers grimly.

His strategy was just to make the team but, at Seoul, he says, “I was entirely focused on Edwin. And, suddenly, in the semis, I knew I could beat him. He won his semi in 47.89 and I won mine in 48.19, but I sensed I had more left than he did.”

It was why his first thought on crossing the finish line was not, “My God, I’ve won the Olympics!” but, “My God, I’ve beat him!”

He paid so much attention to Moses, he almost lost to Ba, the fast-closing dark horse. But he ran a 47.19 Olympic-record time in the final and he had finally finished ahead of Moses.

But was it all that good an idea? Would the public treat him as if he had taken a hammer to a work of art, traduced Mosaic law, shot Santa Claus?

Phillips is willing to brave public obloquy. He points out if he hadn’t won, the gold medal and the honor of beating Moses in the Olympics would now belong to a guy in Dakar whose nickname is Dou Da.

Even Moses should be grateful for being spared that.