- Who Is Edwin Moses?
- How Long Was Edwin Moses' Winning Streak?
- What Was Edwin Moses' 13-Stride Technique?
- What Does the Karelin Method Say About Edwin Moses?
- How Did Edwin Moses' Streak End?
- What Business Lessons Come From Edwin Moses?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Sources
- About the Stagnation Assassin
122 races. Nearly ten years. No losses.
Edwin Moses won 122 consecutive 400-metre hurdles races, 107 of them finals, between August 1977 and June 1987. That run is one of the longest winning streaks in the history of track and field, and it was built less on raw talent than on a piece of engineering: he took 13 strides between every hurdle when his rivals needed more. The short answer to why Moses dominated: he found a structural efficiency nobody else could copy, then repeated it, race after race, for a decade.
This piece covers who Moses was, how the streak started and ended, how the 13-stride pattern worked, and what an operator running a business can take from a hurdler who treated his event like a physics problem.
Who Is Edwin Moses?
Edwin Moses is an American hurdler, born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1955, who won Olympic gold in the 400-metre hurdles at Montreal 1976 and Los Angeles 1984 and a bronze at Seoul 1988, according to his Olympics.com profile. The United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games, so he never had the chance to defend his title there.
He was not a product of a big-time track program. He studied physics at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and the IEEE History Center notes he later worked as an associate test engineer. That background matters, because the way he approached the hurdles looked more like an engineer’s than an athlete’s.
At Montreal in 1976, in his first international season, he won gold in a world record of 47.63 seconds, as Olympics.com recounts.
How Long Was Edwin Moses’ Winning Streak?
Moses lost to West Germany’s Harald Schmid in Berlin on 26 August 1977. He did not lose again until 4 June 1987, when Danny Harris beat him in Madrid. In between he won 122 straight races, 107 of them finals, a run Guinness World Records and his Olympic profile both document.
Put that in operating terms. For almost ten years, every time the gun went off, the outcome was predictable. Weather changed. Tracks changed. Rivals came and went. Moses also lowered the world record four times, finishing at 47.02 seconds in Koblenz on 31 August 1983, a mark that stood for nine years according to World Athletics’ Hall of Fame profile. The result held because the system underneath it held.
The streak is the headline, but the useful part is the mechanism. Winning streaks of that length don’t come from being inspired on the day. They come from a repeatable process that removes the chance of a bad day mattering.
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What Was Edwin Moses’ 13-Stride Technique?
In the 400-metre hurdles, runners clear ten barriers. Between them, most elite hurdlers of the 1970s took 14 strides, and many had to change their stride pattern late in the race as fatigue set in. Moses took 13 strides between every hurdle, all the way around, a pattern World Athletics’ heritage coverage treats as his signature.
One fewer stride per gap sounds small. It isn’t. Fewer strides means fewer ground contacts, a more consistent rhythm, and no awkward stutter to set up a takeoff. He could hold the same pattern and the same lead leg on every hurdle without adjusting. His long stride and his conditioning made the pattern possible, and the pattern made everything else easier.
The lesson for anyone who runs a process is that the advantage wasn’t trying harder between hurdles. It was redesigning the space between them.
What Does the Karelin Method Say About Edwin Moses?
In my book Stagnation Assassin, the Karelin Method treats productivity as three factors multiplied together: Activity, Efficiency and Focus. Because they multiply, a gain in any one lifts the whole result, and a zero in any one wipes it out. I named it after the Greco-Roman wrestler Aleksandr Karelin, who went 887-2.
Moses is a clean case of the Efficiency factor. He didn’t win by running more races than everyone else, and his event never changed. He won by taking a fixed task and doing it with less waste: one stride fewer, ten times a race. Then the Focus factor kept him there. He specialised in one event for his whole career rather than spreading himself across the sprint and hurdle program.
Most businesses do the opposite. They pile more activity onto an inefficient process and wonder why output barely moves. If you want to see where your own numbers land, I explain how in how to calculate your productivity multiplier, and why being busy isn’t the same as being productive in the difference between activity and productivity.
As I put it in the book’s Karelin Method chapter: “It sounds simple, but it’s rarely executed because it requires killing good things to do great things.”
How Did Edwin Moses’ Streak End?
It ended by a fraction. In Madrid on 4 June 1987, Danny Harris won in 47.56 seconds and Moses finished second in 47.69 after clipping the final hurdle, as the New York Times reported the next day. He was 31.
Notice what broke. Not his training, and not his technique in general. A single error at the last barrier, at an age when the margins every athlete relies on begin to thin. A system that has run flawlessly for ten years can still fail at one point, and the failure usually shows up where fatigue is highest.
Moses didn’t disappear afterwards. He won the world title again later that summer in Rome and took bronze at the Seoul Olympics the following year. The streak ended; the standard didn’t.
What Business Lessons Come From Edwin Moses?
- Redesign the gaps, not the effort. Moses’ edge lived between the hurdles. In a business, the waste usually lives between steps: hand-offs, approvals and rework.
- One structural advantage beats ten small tweaks. A single stride removed, ten times a race, mattered more than any amount of extra motivation.
- Consistency is a system output. A ten-year streak tells you the process absorbed bad days. Build processes that do the same.
- Specialise where you can win. He stayed in one event. Pick the market you can dominate before you expand.
- Measure like an engineer. Moses approached his event with a physics student’s eye. Count steps, time them, then cut them.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many races in a row did Edwin Moses win?
Edwin Moses won 122 consecutive 400-metre hurdles races, 107 of them finals, between losses on 26 August 1977 and 4 June 1987.
Who ended Edwin Moses’ winning streak?
American Danny Harris beat Moses in Madrid on 4 June 1987, ending a streak that had begun after Moses lost to Harald Schmid in Berlin in August 1977.
Why did Edwin Moses take 13 strides between hurdles?
Thirteen strides let him hold the same rhythm and lead leg over all ten hurdles while most rivals needed 14 strides and often had to change pattern late in the race.
How many Olympic medals did Edwin Moses win?
Moses won 400-metre hurdles gold at Montreal 1976 and Los Angeles 1984 and bronze at Seoul 1988. The US boycott kept him out of Moscow 1980.
What is the Karelin Method?
The Karelin Method, from Todd Hagopian’s book Stagnation Assassin, multiplies Activity, Efficiency and Focus to raise productivity on critical activities. Moses is an example of the Efficiency factor.
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Sources
- Olympics.com: Edwin Moses athlete profile
- Olympics.com: Moses launches epic era with hurdles record
- World Athletics Heritage: 'Moses – 13 Steps'
- IEEE History Center: Edwin Moses and the Engineering of World Records
- New York Times, 5 June 1987: Moses' streak ends
About the Stagnation Assassin
Todd Hagopian is VP of Product Strategy and Marketing, the founder of Stagnation Assassins, and a business transformation author and speaker. Known as The Stagnation Assassin™, he has led transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works, and Whirlpool that generated $3B+ shareholder value across five turnarounds. He is the author of Stagnation Assassin: The Anti-Consultant Manifesto and The Unfair Advantage: Weaponizing the Hypomanic Toolbox. His blog is published in 15+ languages and read by operators worldwide. Bring him to your stage via his speaking page or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Your move this week: Pick one recurring process in your business and count its ‘strides’: the hand-offs, approvals and steps between start and finish. Remove one, and hold the new standard for six weeks. If you want this thinking in front of your team, see my speaking page, or start with my books.