Laureus Chairman Moses: “Götze has a good chance of picking up an award”

In the DFB.de interview of the week, two-time Olympic Champion and two-time World Champion Ed Moses spoke about the “Laureus World Sports Academy”, of which he is Chairman, and the annual international sports awards.

DFB.de: Edwin Moses, what are the chances that Germany first team caretaker Oliver Bierhoff could pick up the Laureus Award for the best team in the world on Wednesday at the Grand Theatre in Shanghai?

Edwin Moses: In each Laureus category – team, sportsman, sportswoman, breakthrough, comeback and handicap, the best athletes and teams are nominated. There’s a lot of competition in the Laureus Awards. Obviously it was an incredible performance winning the World Cup. Germany’s chances are very good. But Mario Götze also has a good chance as he is nominated in both the “breakthrough” and the “best new star” categories. Most of the academy members who will vote come from footballing nations.

DFB.de: Which is different to you. Did you play football as a small child?

Moses: No, I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and only Baseball and American Football were played back then. My son plays football now and the sport is becoming more and more popular in the USA. There’s a game on the TV every night from either England, Germany, Mexico or South America. Football has a different importance in the USA now compared to ten years ago.

DFB.de: Franz Beckenbauer is a member of the Laureus Academy.

Moses: Correct, as well as Sebastian Coe, Mark Spitz, Martina Navratilova, Sergey Bubka, Boris Becker and many other incredible sportsmen and women who make up the Laureus Academy.

DFB.de: The Laureus Foundation promotes 150 projects for children and teenagers in 34 different countries across the world. What is the focus?

Moses: Our philosophy from the beginning was to use social change to promote sport. Nelson Mandela was our honorary guest at the first awards ceremony in 2000. At the time, he explained to me that when he was in prison on Robben Island he wasn’t able to read the newspaper, apart from the sports section. During his 18 years in jail he remained a sports fan. No other social or charitable sports foundation has an influence comparable to that of Laureus. Only we present the World Sports Awards and only Laureus has an academy with iconic names from the world of sport.

DFB.de: Part of the foundation is the training and the commitment of coaches in order to achieve something in economically undeveloped districts or regions.

Moses: In the USA we send sports coaches into the city centres. We offer the children sport in the afternoon so that they aren’t loitering on the streets. In the long term, you avoid a lot of hidden costs. Mercedes-Benz USA has provided us with $10.5 million for the next three years so that we can send out hundreds of coaches into the inner cities of the biggest cities in the USA. The children play sport, as well as learning important values, such as solving situations in a non-violent way.

DFB.de: What do you mean by hidden costs?

Moses: Without talking about specific numbers because they are different in every country, the money that will be spent to send a criminal to jail for a number of years can be spent on sending someone to university, even to places such as Harvard or Yale. I feel that more and more people are ready to support a different approach. We have to invest more into the promotion of chances instead of waiting for something bad to happen to a teenager. At Laureus, we want to help children and teenagers, that’s our task.

DFB.de: Have you seen Harald Schmid again recently?

Moses: We met up at the 2013 athletics World Championships in Moscow. It was the first time that we had the opportunity to sit down together. My first wife came from Berlin, my son speaks fluent German and also wanted to get to know Harald. We sat together, took a few photos and talked about old times. It was a good moment.

DFB.de: Was he your biggest rival?

Moses: Definitely over the whole time. We were in so many of the same big races and our careers went the same way. In the mid 80s, Harald Schmid was my only serious competitor. If he’d been at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow then he would have definitely won gold.

DFB.de: You came out of nowhere in 1976. You ran a sensational time in the 400 metre hurdles in March in Florida, before winning the first of two Olympic gold medals a few months later in Montreal. You also won two World Championships, broke four world records, most recently in Koblenz in 1983.

Moses: (he laughs) That’s all a long time ago.

DFB.de: Is it true that you used your knowledge of Physics to improve your hurdling technique?

Moses: At the time, I studied Physics at Morehouse College in Atlanta and I was particularly interested in biomechanics. It was totally different in the 70s – no one had a computer and or a laptop. I had my first laptop in 1983 with special software. I learnt how to calculate kinematic equations, which were all to do with speed and acceleration. That knowledge made me a better sportsman. I also studied Biology and Chemistry for a few semesters. I knew more than the normal sportsman. I was definitely ahead of the times.

DFB.de: Were you shocked when you took 13 steps for the first time?

Moses: Definitely not. That was easy. I was really thin at the time. I was sent to school earlier than usual so my classmates were all a year older and bigger than me. But no, when I took 13 steps between the hurdles for the first time I wasn’t shocked. I had long legs…(he laughs) and I weighed practically nothing.

DFB.de: How much are you looking forward to the awards on Wednesday?

Moses: We hold the awards at a different city each year and this year they are in Shanghai. This will be the second time that the Laureus World Award will be handed out in Asia. We’ve been running a project in China since 2003 and back then the members of the academy all travelled to China. Now we’re looking forward to honouring the best sportsmen and women from across the world in Shanghai.