Quality over quantity for Olympic champion Benjamin

“Quality over quantity” defines Rai Benjamin’s professional athletics career.

“That’s just always been a philosophy of mine,” says the Olympic 400m hurdles champion. “And I think it’s a good philosophy for anyone to have.”

Except for his 2 February victory in a 300m in Boston, Benjamin hasn’t competed this year. When he races on Thursday (12) at the Oslo Bislett Games in a star-studded 300m hurdles against Karsten Warholm and Alison dos Santos, that will mark his latest outdoor debut since the pandemic-abbreviated 2020 season. Three days later, the trio will contest a 400m hurdles in Stockholm.

Given his sparse Wanda Diamond League history, Benjamin has never raced before at either of these meetings.

“He’s a very smart guy, so he knows his body and we try to make good choices to keep him healthy,” says Joanna Hayes, who coaches Benjamin in conjunction with fellow Olympic gold medallist Quincy Watts. “He’s had a lot of injuries in the past so the races that he runs all have to make sense.”

Believe it or not, that indoor 300m made sense because Benjamin was already going to be in Boston for a podcast. Benjamin hosts “Beyond the Records” with Olympic gold medallists Noah Lyles and Grant Holloway.

“I just came on a whim,” Benjamin says. “My agent was like, ‘Yo man, you might as well just run.’ And I was like, ‘I’m not running.’”

But Benjamin had second thoughts. He called Vernon Norwood and convinced him to switch from the 400m to the 300m so they could go head-to-head at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix. Both posted lifetime bests – Benjamin in 32.21 and Norwood in 32.39 – and were smiling as they crossed the finish line.

“I told Coach Hayes: ‘I’m not even going to try and press it – it makes no sense to run so fast this early in the year,’” Benjamin says. “So, I just got out how I usually do. I heard (Norwood) coming in, I was like, ‘OK, I gotta put my foot down a little bit.’”

The podcast gives the 27-year-old New York native a chance to flex other muscles.

“I don’t think there’s been a series where the athletes themselves have had a platform to voice their thoughts and their opinions and get other athletes and other notable people from their respective fields to come and talk to us,” Benjamin says. “We teach them about track and they teach us about their respective fields. 

“We’re trying to get out there and brand ourselves, especially leading into 2028 (Los Angeles Olympics) where we have home-field advantage. It’s good to get the audience involved and look at us and look at our personalities. It’s been awesome so far.”

There have been eight podcast episodes in the first four months of 2025 – the same number of 400m hurdles races Benjamin ran in 2024 (including rounds).

He opened the 2024 season with a 400m in April, clocking 44.42, and then ran 46.64 in a 400m hurdles in May.

After Benjamin posted a time of 46.46 in the final at the US Olympic Trials, he proved he was in exceptional form in his sole 2024 Diamond League appearance at the Herculis EBS in Monaco. That race turned out to be a precursor to the Paris Olympics as Benjamin edged Warholm 46.67 to 46.73, with Dos Santos third in 47.18. 

Benjamin was even more dominant at the Games, posting a winning time of 46.46 even though he landed awkwardly off the eighth hurdle and stutter-stepped and switched take-off legs approaching the 10th. Warholm clipped the ninth hurdle and clocked 47.06 while Dos Santos came in at 47.26.

“I had so much momentum coming off the turn, that when I got off the hurdle, I didn’t stabilise my core in time,” Benjamin says. “So, I had so much centrifugal force coming out of the turn that it just kind of threw me to the outside of the lane and I had to take an extra step, which threw me off a bit.”

Yet coming off the turn with too much speed is a good problem to have. “It’s about efficiently distributing that speed evenly throughout the race,” Benjamin says. “I’m hoping this year I clean it up significantly.” 

Hayes, the UCLA head coach who won Olympic gold in the 100m hurdles in 2004, says Benjamin wasn’t supposed to take 14 steps leading up to the final hurdle, but commended him for making a wise choice. “Our whole thing at the Olympic Games was just win,” she says. “We don’t want to take any risks, we don’t want to do anything fancy. Just win. And that’s what it was.”

Despite being one of the top 400m hurdlers in the world since 2018, when he tied Edwin Moses for the second-fastest time (47.02) in history during the NCAA Championships, Benjamin had never won an individual global title until Paris.

He claimed the silver medal behind Warholm at the 2019 World Championships and at the Tokyo Olympics, where they both went faster than the previous world record and Benjamin set a North American record of 46.17.

He again took the silver in 2022, this time behind Dos Santos, and then got bronze in 2023 as Warholm won his third world title and Kyron McMaster of British Virgin Islands finished second.

“I got the monkey off my back, I got the big one,” Benjamin says of Paris. “That’s the one that everyone really wants.”

Of course, he would also like to finally secure a world title, but contends he’s not feeling any pressure to replicate his Olympic success. “For me, I don’t feel like there’s a target on my back,” Benjamin says. “I just want to finally PR. Because I haven’t got a PR since 2021.

“It would lower the American record and possibly break the world record. So, we’ll see.”

Benjamin has been putting in the work in Los Angeles, where he splits his time between Hayes at UCLA and Watts at USC, where he is the head coach. 

“From a health perspective, just running a lot of meets can sometimes wear you out,” says Benjamin, discussing his strategy of minimising the number of races he runs to prolong his career. “And it doesn’t take very long for me to be ready for a championship, whether it’s USAs or Worlds. And once I’m healthy, that’s the focus, so we pick and choose. I want to be able to run something fast every time I get on the track.”

He’ll need to do that in Oslo and Stockholm. Warholm has a 5-4 edge in their head-to-head races and they are tied 4-4 in finals.

“I know on any given day, any one of three or four guys can run 46, and 46 low,” says Benjamin.

He also stays close to home because of the demands of the sport.

“It’s so hard, travelling,” Benjamin says. “My coach is a college coach. She has a job and she has kids, so I can’t just pick up and go somewhere for a week when her kids are in school.”

In the summer, Hayes can travel with Benjamin. And now that he finally has the Olympic gold, she says: “He feels a little free and can try things and do new things, so we’ll get creative and see what else he can do.”

Prior to Paris, Warholm said he wanted to be the first men’s 400m hurdler to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals since Glenn Davis in 1956 and 1960. Now it could be Benjamin.

“Could be,” he says.

In the meantime, he’ll enjoy having one Olympic 400m hurdles gold – plus two in the 4x400m, which are dear to him, but don’t count in quite the same way as the individual crown.  

Benjamin marvels at “just the happiness that it’s brought my family and friends because the previous years, I’ve obviously fallen short.”

He adds: “Second at my first World Championships, second again, third in Budapest. It’s like you’re just right there and you’re scratching the surface. There are some people that have been so great, but they never have won a gold medal in a sport.”

And it wasn’t for lack of trying. But in Benjamin’s case, he’ll choose quality over quantity every time.

Karen Rosen for World Athletics