Rai Benjamin

Rai Benjamin is genuinely one of the most exciting track athletes of his generation, and I feel like he doesn't get nearly enough mainstream attention considering what he's accomplished. Growing up in Mount Vernon, New York and running at USC, he built himself into a 400m hurdles beast — and then at the 2024 Paris Olympics he finally got the gold that had eluded him in Tokyo, where he ran a heartbreaking silver despite going under the world record pace. His personal best of 46.17 seconds makes him the second fastest man ever in the event, and he's stacked up seven World Championships medals on top of that. There's something almost unfairly talented about watching him negotiate the hurdles with that combination of raw speed and technical precision. Track fans know exactly who he is; the rest of the world is just catching up.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Rai Benjamin

Name (Japanese)

ライ・ベンジャミン

Reading

らい・べんじゃみん

Born

July 27, 1997 (age 29)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Leo / Ox

Origin

Mount Vernon, New York, United States

Occupation

athletics competitor

University

University of Southern California

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/kingben/
• Xhttps://x.com/_Kingben_
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai%20Benjamin
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%BB%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%9F%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30231656

Tags

• New York
• athletics competitor

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.