Another Moses who came down from the mountain …

Ed Moses, now 64, is indisputably one of the all-time greats of track and field – and also one of my favourite sporting heroes partly because of his extraordinary achievements and partly because of his physique and personality.

A quite different character to Muhammad Ali, perhaps the all-time greatest sporting star – with his tall, rangy figure, relaxed bearing and aloof ‘above it all’ detachment – Moses simply oozed inner strength, class and charisma.

Whenever he appeared on the track, it was as if a super-hero from outer space had landed briefly among his Earth-bound opponents and onlookers and was operating on an entirely different level.

Which, in many respects he was.

He won the 400 metres hurdles gold medal at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. The only reason, some might argue, that he did not also win another at the 1980 Moscow Olympics was because he was one of the US athletes that boycotted them because of Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

In the eleven seasons 1977 to 1987 he won no fewer than 122 consecutive 400 metres races (and 107 consecutive finals) and set the world record for the event on four different occasions.

I need not bother Rusters with more details of his outstanding sporting career.

Since his retirement from track and field among his other high profile roles have been as a campaigner on Olympic eligibility and a leader in the fight to expose performance-enhancing drug use in his sport.

In 1988 he designed and developed the first-ever amateur track and field random ‘out of competition’ drug testing programme and since 2000 he has been chairman of the Laureus Word Sports Academy which promotes participation in every sport at every level and ‘uses sport as a tool for change around the world’.

In 2009 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for his efforts to maintain the integrity of Olympic sports and his work to promote social change through sport.

All of which prefaces my move today to link readers to this interview with Moses about the dark days of drug-taking in track and field by Donald McRae, as appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN