Life-changer: Edwin Moses and Marvelous Marvin Hagler on the power of sport
The legendary Olympic hurdler boxing great come from very different backgrounds, but they are preaching the same message of hope
Their backgrounds might be different, but Edwin Moses and Marvelous Marvin Hagler have at least one thing in common - they know all about sport transforming young lives, a message they have been trying to spread in Hong Kong.
Moses, the two-time Olympic gold medallist who went nine years, nine months and nine days unbeaten in the 400-metre hurdles, and Hagler, the undisputed middleweight boxing champion of the world for nearly seven years, utterly dominated their disciplines in the late '70s and '80s.
Both are now ambassadors for Laureus, a charity that uses sport to provide coaching and education to disadvantaged kids all over the world. On Friday, they spoke at a forum organised by local charity Operation Breakthrough, which uses sport to fight juvenile delinquency and help troubled kids in Hong Kong.
I know for a fact any time you can dissuade kids from doing things that are exciting but dangerous and not good for them, it's a good thing
Moses gave the keynote speech and you hope the honoured guest, Secretary for Home Affairs Tsang Tak-sing, paid attention to him and other speakers, from the Hong Kong Sports Institute, Hong Kong Rugby Football Union, Hong Kong Police and University of Hong Kong, to name a few.
While Hagler ticks all the stereotypical boxes for a boxing champ - poverty-stricken ghetto life, father-figure trainer, the ring providing discipline absent elsewhere, etc - Moses came from a family of teachers, where only As and Bs were acceptable, and went to university on an academic - not sporting - scholarship.
He might have been satisfied with his physics degree and engineering job had he failed to qualify for the 1976 Olympics as a 20-year-old, where his period of dominance began - unbeaten for 122 consecutive races, multiple world records. But he knows many in the African-American community, ravaged by drugs and neglect, are not as lucky as he was to have a stable family life and two loving parents.
"I came from a middle-class background, in a middle-class neighbourhood surrounded by [housing] projects," he recalls. "One of the things I remember is that everyone had a mother and a father in the community - and a lot of that changed in the mid-sixties, early '70s and '80s.