Clearing a new hurdle

Thus does his academic career come full circle for the 53-year-old Moses, an engineering student at Morehouse College in 1976 when he won the 400-meter hurdles at the Montreal Games and went on to dominate the event for a dozen years, earning two more Olympic medals and two world titles, setting four global records and winning 122 consecutive races.

Along the way, Moses took a lead role in two breakthroughs that transformed Olympic sports - trust funds that allowed amateur athletes to keep up with their state-supported rivals from socialist countries and random out-of-competition drug testing. "Edwin Moses is more than an Olympic athlete," says UMass-Boston chancellor Keith Motley. "He is a visionary who leverages his abilities, education and understanding to inspire others."

These days Moses traverses the planet as chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, which promotes sport as a tool for social change. "You can see the good that's being done," says Moses, who has been involved with Laureus since 2000. "It's not selfish and it's not greedy. They may not know who you are, but you can have a significant impact on peoples' lives."

The Laureus projects range from athletics for women in Morocco to sports for the disabled in India to youth boxing in Rio De Janeiro to martial arts in the South Bronx to cross-border activities for Catholic and Protestant youths in Ireland.

"We take a lot for granted how lucky we are to be able to do a sport with the kind of equipment and facilities we have in this country," Moses says. "In Kenya they make soccer balls out of the throwaway bags you get at the store. They blow up a balloon and put it inside and wrap the bags around and they play with that. In certain parts of the world, kids are like little wizards with the ball."

Moses was something of a self-made champion himself. He grew up in Dayton as a leggy, skinny kid who came across as a science geek. "I couldn't get a scholarship out of high school," said Moses. "I looked like [Steve] Urkel, seriously." So he went to Morehouse in Atlanta on an academic scholarship, studying physics and industrial engineering, and ran for a track team that didn't have a track.

Moses carpooled around town with teammates to find places to train and by his junior year he'd made himself into a world-class hurdler as a scientist would. "You start by doing and listening," he says. "Reading books, watching video, just experimenting." With the Olympics on the horizon, Moses settled on the 400 hurdles as his best chance to get to Montreal. "The event was custom-made for me," he said. "I was a very good 110 hurdler who could run a quarter as well."

Though he'd never run an international race, Moses was convinced he would not only win the gold medal but also break the world record, and he told people so. Then he went out and won by the biggest margin in Olympic history, beating US teammate Mike Shine by more than a second in 47.63. "Everything went right according to plan," Moses said. Setting the global mark was critical, he believed, since Ugandan record-holder John Akii-Bua couldn't run because of the African boycott. Now, there was no doubt who the planet's fastest man was.

Nor would there be for another decade. Between August 1977 and June 1987 - nine years, nine months and nine days - Moses didn't lose a race. He almost certainly would have won another Olympic gold medal in 1980 if the Americans hadn't stayed home from Moscow. He did win another in 1984 and still is irked that he had to settle for bronze in 1988. "I should have won the race," he says. "No way I should have been behind those guys."

Moses's push for modern eligibility standards helped end Olympic "shamateurism" in the '80s and his anti-doping work led to the anytime-anywhere testing that has helped the labs keep up with the cheaters. After he retired, Moses earned an MBA from Pepperdine and worked as a financial adviser for Salomon Smith Barney. "Track was my hobby," Moses says. "It was an avocation that turned into a vocation."

The man who reckons he ran 26,000 miles during his career still dashes across time zones. He was in London last weekend and is headed back, with three more trips to Europe scheduled this summer.

There are Laureus projects to check on, speeches to give, corporate donors to woo. "That's been my replacement for running around the track," Moses says. "Making a difference in a different kind of way."

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com.