The Interview Edwin Moses: Colossus of sport laments 'clean' age of

On the track, Edwin Moses was as remorseless a winner as he is these days a dedicated promoter of the Nelson Mandela mantra that sport has the power to change the world. Once described as the most ruthless athlete in history, the academic hurdler who went to the same school as Martin Luther King always wanted to be remembered as 'the guy nobody could beat'. And he almost got his wish, remaining undefeated for nine years, nine months and nine days, for 122 consecutive races.

He soared almost effortlessly over the 10 three-foot hurdles, taking an unprecedented 13 steps between them instead of the usual 14, and was never one for hiding lights under bushels. 'My slow is faster than most athletes' fast,' he used to say. From 1976 to 1989 he competed in 156 400m hurdle races and was beaten just six times, a record unlikely to be equalled in athletics.

And it was all done without the aid of drugs. Not a shot, a pill or even a potion. Unlike his Biblical namesake, this Moses was not one for swallowing the tablets.

These days he focuses mainly on his work as chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy and the Sport for Good Found-ation, its charitable offshoot, which embraces 37 projects around the world. Tomor- row he will preside over the sixth swish, star-studded ceremony that heralds the Oscars of global sport, in Estoril, Portugal.

He will be among friends as well as fans. Sebastian Coe, one of his fellow Academy members, says of him: 'Ed's a colossus, an absolute colossus. Paramount in any judgement you make about any athlete's career is consistency, and he was unbeatable, technically incomparable, oozing confidence in a way that was quite fearsome. Most of us in sport look up to him as the athlete's athlete. He has always had a very broad view of the world, which is what has made his chairmanship of the awards so outstanding.'

Moses, who will be 50 in August, looked as lean and fit now as he was at his athletics zenith when we met in London last week. 'I've always tried to keep my body in top physical condition, but for me my main consideration has been my diet.' He lives alone in Atlanta, cooking for himself 'ninety per cent of the time, usually pasta and fresh vegetables'. He also trains regularly, not on the track every day but plenty of stretching exercises and running with his German Shepherd, Basil. However, two years ago he wasn't quite in the shape he is in now. He was quite ill with a bout of E. coli and dysentery, picked up not during his travels in the Third World for the Laureus foundation, but at a restaurant in Europe. 'It took me more than a year to recover,' he says.

It was on the back of that recovery that Moses, the Olympic champion of 1976 and 1984, took an extraordinary decision to attempt a comeback with, it seemed, the ambition of competing in the Athens Olympics on the brink of his 49th birthday. 'A scientific and emotional experiment,' was how he described it.

It was painfully short-lived, aborted because of injuries to both knees. 'The joint lubrication was not what it was when I was competing, and I decided that not having arthritis or rheumatism for the rest of my life was a lot more important to me than returning to the track. I would have been happy to see if I could run 50.5 seconds or so just to qualify for the US Olympic trials. That was my only intention. I wasn't trying to relive anything or even get into the Olympics. I didn't need that. Lots of people let it go by and never accomplish what they want. I just wanted to see what I could do.'

At Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he majored in physics and engineering, he was known by fellow students as 'the bionic man', because of his scientific approach to the sport. When he was a 20- year-old little-known scholar from an all-black college, he won his first Olympic gold medal in Montreal in 1976, just four months after running his first 400m hurdles, setting a world record of 47.64sec. His victory by eight metres over Mike Shine was the largest winning margin in the event's history. The world record he set in 1983, 47.02sec, endured for another nine years.

He never got the chance to defend his Olympic title because of the US boycott of Moscow, something which still rankles, and away from the track he fought vigorously for athletes' rights, challenging the rules that had prevented amateurs from accepting money for competing and making endorse- ments. But he did not receive the same support from his contemporaries when he became an anti-drugs campaigner, calling for random testing, a few years later.

Moses went on to win gold at the 1983 World Championships, despite his shoe-laces coming undone on the back straight, and again in the Olympics in 1984. Another gold came in the 1987 in the World Championships, avenging the defeat inflicted by Danny Harris earlier that year.

His final Olympic medal, a bronze in 1988, was achieved in Seoul at a Games scarred by the Ben Johnson drugs scandal. 'I know for a fact that there were other athletes in that Olympics, even in that race, who were on drugs,' he says. Big names? 'Oh yes, some very big names. We know now a number of tests both in 1984 and '88 were thrown away. I've sat on a drugs commission myself, and I know what happens, what contingencies were made.