At the end of the 2025 track season, Rai Benjamin was the undisputed best 400m hurdler in the world. He was fresh off winning a world title in Tokyo and one year removed from getting the monkey off his back with his first global title with an Olympic gold medal in Paris. He had lost just one race in his signature event over the last two seasons and had three of the four fastest times in the world since the end of 2022. Benjamin did all this in by far the most competitive era in the event’s history. One where he, Norway’s Karsten Warholm and Brazil’s Alison dos Santos took the 400m hurdles to new heights.

But in the mixed zone after his world title in Japan, the American flag still draped around his neck and just moments removed from literally being crowned on the track, the 28-year-old announced he wouldn’t be racing over hurdles in 2026. He would continue to contest the one-lap distance but switch over to the flat 400m for the year.

It wasn’t an unprecedented decision ahead of what was billed as an “off-year” in track and field – the one year in every Olympic cycle without a Summer Games or a world outdoor championships. In fact, it was only about a year after Benjamin’s 400m hurdles gold medalist counterpart from Paris – Sydney Levrone – made the same choice.

It was a decision, though, that had all track fans wondering how fast Benjamin could round the oval without hurdles in his way. Especially after Levrone’s switch resulted in a world title and the second-fastest time in history.

The answer, it turns out, is really fast.

Benjamin was hot out of the gate, starting his season in May with a 400m personal best of 44.21 – replacing a mark that was set back in April of 2023.

Two races later he’d improved to 44.05 – tied for the fastest ever flat 400m time by a primary hurdler – a mark held by Angelo Taylor, who won Olympic golds over hurdles in 2000 and 2008.

Benjamin’s next race though was the turning point for his season. Despite not practicing over barriers all year, he and his team decided to test those waters at a race in Lausanne, Switzerland. He won by a whopping 1.41 seconds, picking up where he left off last summer.

In his week of hurdling practice ahead of that race, Benjamin toyed with the potential of taking his return one step further. He was already planning to race the flat 400m at the season-ending World Ultimate Championship (the inaugural edition of a new championship event) in Budapest but also had a bye into the 400m hurdles as the reigning Olympic and world champion.

Benjamin called it a spur of the moment decision and began his accelerated journey to pulling off both events with just over three weeks of hurdle training.

Before that, he had one more race on the Diamond League circuit. Just two days after hurdling in Switzerland, he returned to the flat 400m in Silesia, Poland. The quick turnaround was a planned test to mirror the type of effort he would need to double in Budapest.

Benjamin smashed his PB – and the 44-second barrier – running 43.83 in Silesia, finishing runner-up to the reigning world champion, Botswana’s Busang Collen Kebinatshipi. After the race he announced the bold intention of “the double.”

How to Become the 400m Hurdles GOAT

The dress rehearsal went just about as well as he could have imagined, but in about two and a half weeks he would be asking his body for even more, needing to race four times in the compressed three-day schedule of the Ultimate Championship.

Four days later, Benjamin was back at home training in L.A. while another hurdle race was going on. A showdown in Zurich, Switzerland between the other two members of the “Big 3” – dos Santos and Warholm. Benjamin was following the live results on his phone and couldn’t fathom the 45.80 mark that came up when dos Santos crossed the line.

The world record in the 400m hurdles had stood for over five years since Warholm and Benjamin’s legendary showdown in an empty stadium at the Tokyo Olympics amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. No one had gotten all that close to Warholm’s mark in the years since (Benjamin’s time as runner-up stood as the second-fastest in history until dos Santos’ run in Zurich) even with all three titans of the event pushing each other year in and year out.

By World Athletics’ results scores – a metric created by the governing body of track and field to compare performances across different events – dos Santos’ new mark ranks behind only two other times in men’s track races: Usain Bolt’s world records in the 100m and 200m.

Benjamin watched the race some 15 minutes later when it was posted on social media and was thoroughly impressed at how hard dos Santos stormed out of the gates. “He made everyone look like they were standing still from [hurdles] two through four.”

Does he wish he was in the race?

“Of course, 100%,” Benjamin says before the question is even over. “You never know how you might react in a situation like that… Maybe we get to hurdle nine and I pull away.”

Benjamin knows that his competition is tough but appreciates being a part of the golden age of his event.

“It feels good that we’ve rewritten the history books in the event,” he said. “I don’t think anyone will ever see anything like that ever again.”

“Rewriting the history books” is a massive understatement on Benjamin’s part – a more accurate characterization would be complete demolition. From 1992 to 2021, Kevin Young’s world record of 46.78 stood the test of time. In the five years since Young’s mark was first broken, the trio of Warholm, Benjamin, and dos Santos combined to run the 37 fastest times ever.

It’s a widely held belief that whichever hurdler among the three finishes his career with the best resume will be considered the greatest ever in the event.

With Warholm and Benjamin splitting the last two Olympic titles and dos Santos coming off an all-time season, a reasonable argument could be made for any of the three obtaining eventual G.O.A.T. status. But Benjamin knows exactly what he must do in his mind to get there.

“Just the world record. That’s it.”

It’s the one thing dos Santos and Warholm have that he doesn’t. All three have loaded Olympic and world championship medal tallies, with Benjamin’s six leading the way.

Benjamin doesn’t just want the world record though, “I have to do it. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it.”

And when Benjamin is done with it, he wants the record to last for a long time.

“Just put it so far out of reach that no one else would think [to break it],” he said. “Like Bolt’s world record, it just feels out of reach for a lot of people. If I could do that [the G.O.A.T status is] cemented for sure.”

While Benjamin hasn’t run a personal best in the hurdles since 2021, one thing is in his favor as he returns to the event in 2027.

“Establishing that flat speed was extremely important because it put me in a different category physically than anyone else in the field,” Benjamin said. Dos Santos’ 400m PB is 44.38, while Warholm’s sits at 44.87 from all the way back in 2017. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison though.

“The thing with the 400m hurdles is it’s such a different event,” Benjamin said. “Getting that rhythm down is extremely important… The 400m is more aggressive. You have to get up faster and harder than the 400m hurdles.”

In the age of the “Big 3” however, the hurdles has come closer to resembling the traditional lap around the track. The trend that started as Warholm’s signature style was exemplified in dos Santos’ world record race. “They’re actually running full tilt through 200m,” Benjamin said. “We’ve shifted the race to being really aggressive in that first 200m, and if you’re not there with them, you’re just going to get punished.”

That turns the last 100m into more of a war of attrition as opposed to a finishing kick. “We’re not necessarily running any faster, it’s just who’s decelerating the least,” Benjamin said.

He’s been running one-lap races around the track for so long that he’s fine-tuned his body to pinpoint exactly how to balance the hard start and saving enough for the finish.

“I know what 21-flat feels like, and I know what 20-point feels like (through 200m),” he said.

The Ultimate Double

On Sept. 11 in Budapest – just weeks after deciding to take on the 400m/400m hurdles double for the first time since a 2017 USC/UCLA dual meet – Benjamin stood on the start line for his first of four races over the next 48 hours.

He coasted through to the 400m final as the third of four qualifiers in his semifinal and was done for the day. It was his easiest outing of the three-day stretch.

He was back on the line 23 hours later, alongside the best athletes in the world – in his secondary event. Kebinatshipi stole the show by going out hard and holding on for the fifth-fastest time in history (43.39), but Benjamin decelerated the least of anyone else down the home stretch, ending his season of experimentation in the 400m as the clear No. 2 in the world.

Less than a minute later, as Kebinatshipi completed his celebratory post-race pushups and the rest of the field remained catching their breath, Benjamin was jogging back under the stadium to get ready for his second event starting in a little over an hour.

He soon reemerged for the first semifinal of the 400m hurdles, not even granted the few extra minutes of rest that would come with racing in the second heat. As he lined up for just his second hurdle race of the season, he did so alongside the new world record holder dos Santos.

The two crossed paths on the circuit dozens of times over the past half-decade and built a friendly relationship. Confident that their talent was superior to everyone else in their semifinal, dos Santos and Benjamin had predetermined a game of “rock-paper-scissors” if they came off the final hurdle neck-and-neck.

As they cleared hurdle number ten, they did their best to follow through on the plan, but in a bit of foreshadowing Benjamin couldn’t quite keep up with dos Santos. Their final few meters turned into a pair of friends chuckling at a joke that none of the fans in the sellout crowd were in on, but enjoyed nonetheless.

The next day, again on less than 24 hours rest, Benjamin sat one lane inside dos Santos, who himself was one lane inside his world record predecessor in Warholm. As the gun went off, the “Big 3” remained stride for stride over the first 200m, already putting distance on the rest of the field. “Karsten got out really hard, Alison tracked it really well, and I tracked Alison really well,” Benjamin recalled. “All three of us got out extremely hard, it just wasn’t noticeable because we were kind of in unison to 200m.”

Benjamin and dos Santos then began to separate themselves, with the American reaching the penultimate hurdle dead even with the tall Brazilian. Benjamin vividly recounts clipping a hurdle late in the race, and although it is nearly imperceptible upon rewatching, he knew right then and there that he’d lost the race.

“As soon as I clipped a hurdle, I just said to myself, ‘Yeah I lost,’” he said. “There’s no coming back from that because you have all this momentum coming out of the turn, and you brush a hurdle that last 120-150m, it’s just going to slow you down.”

The margin for error when racing a world record holder in peak fitness is decidedly small. Dos Santos stopped the clock at 45.98, only the third sub-46 second performance in history. As he analyzed the race in the weeks since, Benjamin points out that many of dos Santos’ splits that day were nearly identical to his world record performance. “There wasn’t that much of a difference between what we ran in Budapest through [hurdle] nine and what he ran in Zurich,” he said.

The result for Benjamin was beyond impressive. He held on for second in an astonishing 46.40, the third-fastest time of his career in just his third hurdles race of the season. Faster than his world title-winning time from 2025 (46.52). Faster than his Olympic gold medal-winning time in 2024 (46.46). Why is this so remarkable?

“The 400m hurdles is such a different event,” he said. “Getting that rhythm down is extremely important. Those guys have been racing all season, so they have that rhythm down. After doing it for so many years, you know what it should feel like, but the rhythm wasn’t down 100% because I was running so many [400s].”

Benjamin is a man who is intentional with his words, so it’s no mistake that he repeated “rhythm” over and over again. It’s that important.

“I think had I run like two more hurdle races; [Budapest] would have been absolutely insane,” Benjamin imagined.

Regardless, his feat at the season’s final meet was still “insane.” At a championship that featured the largest prize purse in track and field history, Benjamin walked away with $150,000 “the hard way.”

He was the runner-up in two different events, and in each one finished behind only an athlete having arguably the greatest season that event had ever seen.

So it’s fairly straightforward to conclude that his increased 400m speed helped in the hurdles and fans will be eager to see how that carries over to 2027 and beyond.

Hometown Olympics Around the Corner

We now head into a two-year span that has the potential to take Benjamin from a star in his own sport to one that can transcend into the American sports spotlight. Refocusing on his special event, he’ll go all-in on the hurdles looking to leave no doubt that he’s the best in the world come 2028.

The New York native moved west for college in the fall of 2015 and has remained there since. One of the rare athletes that competed for both UCLA and USC, Benjamin has lived in L.A. for 11 years now and has no plans of going anywhere.

“I feel really connected,” he said. “It’s become my home in all honesty. It’s a really special place to me. I love it.”

He says he’ll likely remain there post-career, unless he becomes “a multi-millionaire overnight and then I can be bi-coastal,” he jokes.

Benjamin finished his collegiate career at USC – where he’ll hope to return in less than two years’ time to the L.A. Coliseum for the Olympic final. He now trains, however, where he began his collegiate career at UCLA, under the program’s current director of track and field Joanna Hayes, herself an Olympic gold medalist from 2004 in the 100m hurdles (UCLA’s campus is set to serve as the Olympic village for the 2028 Games, so Benjamin may get to return for a stint in his college dorms a dozen years after leaving the school).

Benjamin is looking to become just the second man in history to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals in the 400m hurdles, joining American Glenn Davis, who did so in 1956 and 1960.

It will be a tough task after dos Santos took a clear step forward in his progression this season. The 6’7” Brazilian is now faster than Benjamin while also being three years younger.

Benjamin will turn 31 years old during the final days of the L.A. Games, and if he wins gold, would be the second-oldest Olympic champion in the 128 year-history of the 400m hurdles (the Dominican Republic’s Felix Sanchez won his second gold in 2012 at age 34).

How much longer does Benjamin plan on competing?

“Until Nike tells me, ‘We’re done with you,’” he quips.

Benjamin admits that the end of his career is becoming more of a conversation, and that he plans to reevaluate after the 2029 season. But as with every Olympian, the temptation of four more years may be too strong to pass up.

“In today’s day and age, where there’s so much you could do recovery-wise, it’s prolonging people’s careers,” he said.

After a long pause, he dares, “I’m gonna make a push for 2032.”

Whenever he hangs up the spikes, it’ll be clear. Benjamin doesn’t plan to stay closely involved at the professional level after his retirement.

“A lot of people like to hang around, I won’t be,” he said. “I’ll go to a track meet here and there, but I’m not gonna hang around too much.”

If he were to change his mind, the sport would happily accept a mind like Benjamin’s to stick around, as he’s never been shy to share his opinions on the issues of track and field.

In the end Benjamin just wants to see track and field rise to the same level of popularity in the United States as it is in Europe and the many places around the world he has traveled to compete.

The next two seasons leading up to the 2028 Olympics on American soil could play a massive part in achieving that goal.

A potential final Olympic showdown between Benjamin, dos Santos and Warholm would be one of the most anticipated events of the Los Angeles Games.

Benjamin has plenty of business to take care of between now and then, however, starting with eyes on the world record in 2027 in his pursuit of becoming the greatest hurdler the sport has ever seen.