The appetizer course goes to Rai Benjamin.
In a Paris Olympic preview of the men’s 400m hurdles, Benjamin edged world-record holder Karsten Warholm of Norway by just 0.06-seconds to win at the Monaco Diamond League meet.
Benjamin’s time of 46.67 seconds topped a loaded field that included Warholm, who ran 46.73, and 2022 World Champion Alison dos Santos of Brazil, who finished third in 47.18.
The tilt in Monaco was billed as a clash of titans in the 400m hurdles. Benjamin, Warholm and dos Santos hold the top-three times in history. Warholm’s best time of 45.94 seconds has stood as a world record since August 2021, when he won gold at the Tokyo Olympics. Benjamin took silver in Tokyo, with dos Santos securing bronze.
“We expect an amazing race,” Ato Boldon of NBC Sports said seconds before the starting gun. “We have the three best ever in this event.”
The race lived up to the lofty hype. At the eighth hurdle, Warholm led by a hair over dos Santos, with Benjamin in third. But the U.S. star leveraged his elite flat speed to storm ahead of dos Santos at hurdle No. 9 to surge past Warholm in the home stretch.
Benjamin's time of 46.67 seconds is just a half second below his personal best and 0.21-seconds below his U.S. Olympic Trials-winning time at the end of June.
SEE MORE: Rai Benjamin topples Trials record to book Olympic spot
Benjamin will represent the U.S. at the Paris Games alongside CJ Allen and Trevor Bassitt. Allen placed sixth in the Monaco event at 48.28 seconds.
In Paris, Benjamin, Warholm and dos Santos will vie for gold and continue this golden era of the event — the top-15 times in history all have been recorded in the past 36 months, all by one of those three athletes.
SEE MORE: Warholm annihilates own 400m hurdles world record, wins gold in epic showdown
The men’s 400m hurdles final in Paris is set for Friday, August 9 at State de France.
