In last week’s premiere of FloTrack’s newest documentary series WHAT HAPPENED TO OBEA MOORE, we introduced you to the man who was supposed to be the greatest quarter-miler of all time. At the age of 16, Obea Moore ran 45.14 which still stands as the World Youth record. That was 1995. 

 

Moore couldn’t be stopped on the track during the mid-1990s, and his speed had been the stuff of legend since he started running at age seven. Fast-forward ten years later, and a 17-year-old Obea Moore was toeing the line at the Olympic Trials against Michael Johnson. 

 

“I felt like a boy,” Moore remembered. 

 

Although the teenager wouldn’t qualify for the Olympic Games, he would go on to become the 400m World junior champion later that summer. Moore’s future appeared bright. 

Watch WHAT HAPPENED TO OBEA MOORE Ep. 1 HERE

But now in 2015 we see a much different Obea Moore. In Episode 1, the now-36-year-old Moore returns to Philadelphia for the Penn Relays for the first time since he circled the Franklin Field track back in the mid-90s. Moore famously split 45.08 to help John Muir High set the 3:08.72 Penn Relays 4x400 record back in 1997, a split that equaled the fastest high school leg in Relays history.

 

Moore returns to Philiadelphia to be inducted into the famed Penn Relays Wall of Fame, one of the first times that his name has surfaced in the track and field world since that record-breaking 4x4. NCAA titles, Olympic medals, World records, these were the accomplishments that Moore seemed destined to achieve when he was tearing up the track as a teen, but his career after high school never took off. 

 

Now, Obea Moore is ready to tell the story of what happened to him after his glory days.

 

“For so long, I always felt like the track and field world forgot about me,” Moore said. 

 

Episode 2 of WHAT HAPPENED TO OBEA MOORE premieres tomorrow, where we get to hear from the man himself on a career that never was.