12-Stepping for Edwin Moses?
by Steve McGill
Recently, while doing research on the biography I’m writing on Renaldo Nehemiah, I came across an article about Edwin Moses in the December 1979 issue of Track & Field News. The article begins with the words, “Edwin Moses admitted in Montreal [site of the 1976 Olympics] that he has been working on perfecting 12 strides in the intermediates.” The article then goes on to quote Moses directly: “I plan to work very hard on 12 strides next year. Right now, I charge hard using 13 all the way and I end up on top of the hurdle too fast.” Of course, here, he was talking about the early part of the race. Another hurdler, Harry Schulting of Holland, is also quoted in the article. Schulting, who had a personal best of 48.48 at the time, took 13 strides through the first six hurdles before switching to 14 (and alternating lead legs) for the last four hurdles. Schulting seemed to believe that such a strategy would’ve been beneficial for Moses as well. “At Montreal,” he said, “it seemed to me that Moses had to stretch his strides terribly over the last few hurdles, rather than just sensibly changing his pattern.”
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Interesting! Part of the reason that the above thoughts are so intriguing is because Moses’ 13-stride pattern for the whole race is generally accepted as the gold standard stride pattern for 400 meter hurdlers. Moses’ comments in the above paragraph blew my mind because they confirmed my belief, based on watching footage of many of his races, that he was really crowded 13-stepping in the early part of races, and could’ve easily 12-stepped at least the second and third hurdles. Meanwhile, Schulting’s comments are also fascinating because I have noted before that an older Moses in 1987 and 1988 would’ve been better off taking 14 steps over hurdles nine and ten. But Schulting was saying basically the same thing about a much younger Moses, and Schulting seemed to be implying that maintaining the 13 strides between hurdles for an entire race was an impractical strategy. I don’t know if I agree with that assessment, but I don’t necessarily discard the notion either. In another article in this issue, I talk about Rai Benjamin’s race at the Golden Games, where he ran 47.14 13-stepping the whole way. In that article, I note how he was struggling to maintain the 13 steps on the final homestretch, and that his hurdling form suffered as a result.
In both Moses’ comments and Schulting’s comments, the commonality lies in the fact that both were saying that alternating would’ve been a good idea. As we know, Moses never did incorporate a 12-stride rhythm at any point in his career, so I would assume that because he was winning so regularly and by so much, it didn’t make sense to take on such a high-risk high-reward change. But it is worth noting that 1992 Olympic champion and world record holder Kevin Young did take the risk by 12-stepping hurdles three and four on the backstretch on his way to the 46.78 that still stands as the fastest time ever run, even though Benjamin and Karsten Warholm and Abderrahman Samba have all run under 47.00 and are knocking on the door of Young’s record.
In looking at the video of the 1976 Olympic final above, I see no obvious evidence that Moses, despite what Schulting said, was having any difficulty maintaining his 13 strides between hurdles in the last part of the race. His take-off distance looks good the whole way and his technique looks good the whole way. But it does seem evident that he was coming up closely on hurdles two and three, to the point where he could’ve 12-stepped both hurdles and been in perfect rhythm. Probably, 12-stepping early in the race would’ve necessitated 14-stepping the last two hurdles, but maybe not. It could be argued that squeezing in 13 strides early caused more fatigue than a natural, fluid 12-step rhythm would have.
But what is my overall point here? To put it simply, having the ability to alternate is very helpful when it comes to putting together a race plan and developing a race strategy from race to race. As I’ve noted in previous articles, Warholm has varied his stride pattern from race to race; he has gone 15 strides over the last two hurdles, 14 strides over the last two, and 13 the whole way. And he ran his fastest when he 14-stepped the last two.
Let’s just be straightforward here and say that for most hurdlers in the known universe, 13-stepping the whole way is simply not an option. Being able to alternate means being able to change down from 13 to 14 instead of changing down from 13 to 15. It can also give a right-leg leading hurdler to switch to the left leg for at least one of the hurdles on the curve. It also means that hurdlers whose stride length best fits a 14-stride rhythm between the hurdles (or any even-numbered rhythm) can alternate in the first half of the race just because that’s the most natural option to choose. There’s no reason to automatically assume that all hurdlers want to take an odd number of strides between the hurdles in the first part of the race. Because many hurdlers first learn to hurdle by training for the 100/110m hurdles, very few hurdlers learn to alternate when they first start out, which is why most hurdlers will take an odd-numbered amount of steps between the hurdles in the first part of the race even if an even-numbered stride pattern might make more sense.
Perhaps the most significant thing to consider regarding Moses’ belief that 12-stepping early in the race would’ve been helpful is the fact that it undermines the main argument of those who claim that alternating is a useless skill: Edwin Moses never alternated and he’s the greatest ever. Well, that’s right: Moses is the greatest ever, and he never did alternate, but now we know that he did seriously consider it, and was fully aware of the benefits that doing so could provide.
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