You could argue that was moving the goalposts, since at that point the Soviets were (significantly?) ahead of the Americans, but the Soviets had just put Gagarin briefly in orbit. It seems hard to say that there had been that much of a "race" to that point?
Yes, they declared their intent, but there was never an official "race".
Matter of fact is that the US was behind the USSR in terms of technology. Kennedy declared a symbolic goal that was extremely risky and served little scientific purpose, and then accomplished that. That's the moving of goalposts. It was never a race to put a man on the moon, it was a rapidly developing scientific field, and the USSR was ahead of the US until their country started falling apart.
And now, because of that symbolic goal and a successful PR campaign, people don't know the USSR's achievements. The commenter above didn't know the USSR was the first to land on the moon and just claimed it was the US. That's the part that irks me.
You could argue that was moving the goalposts, since at that point the Soviets were (significantly?) ahead of the Americans, but the Soviets had just put Gagarin briefly in orbit. It seems hard to say that there had been that much of a "race" to that point?