Could the U.S. win every Olympic men’s sprint event in Paris? It’s looking more possible after Friday’s Diamond League meet in Monaco.
Rai Benjamin and Quincy Hall won the 400m hurdles and 400m, respectively, the only sprints that the U.S. men did not win at the 2023 World Championships.
Benjamin won a 400m hurdles showdown among the three fastest men in history.
Benjamin, the Tokyo Olympic silver medalist, overtook Norwegian Karsten Warholm, the Olympic gold medalist, coming off the final hurdle.
DIAMOND LEAGUE: Full Results
Benjamin clocked 46.67, followed by Warholm (46.73) and Brazil’s Alison dos Santos (47.18), the Olympic bronze medalist.
Warholm, the world record holder (45.94), Benjamin and dos Santos combine to own the 17 fastest times in history.
Benjamin is the world’s fastest man this year (46.46) and also was last year (46.39), even though he took bronze at last August’s world championships.
Also Friday, Hall took the 400m in 43.80, becoming the only man to break 44 in 2024. Hall, the 2023 World bronze medalist, began the season with a personal best of 44.37.
The U.S. already has reigning men’s world champions in the 100m (Noah Lyles), 200m (Lyles), 110m hurdles (Grant Holloway) and the 4x100m and 4x400m relays.
An American is the fastest man in the world this year in every individual sprint except the 100m.
The U.S. last swept all seven Olympic men’s sprint golds at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. It has never done so on the women’s side.
In Tokyo, the U.S. won none of the individual men’s sprints for the first time in Olympic history (excluding the boycotted 1980 Moscow Games).
Also in Monaco, Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen ran the sixth-fastest 1500m in history, and world’s fastest in nine years. Ingebrigtsen, the Tokyo Olympic gold medalist, clocked 3:26.73, a European record.
In Paris, Ingebrigtsen will bid to become the first man to win the 1500m and 5000m at the same Olympics since Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco, the 1500m world record holder (3:26.00) who did the double in 2004.
Algerian Djamel Sedjati won the 800m in 1:41.46, the seventh-fastest time in history. Canadian Marco Arop, the 2023 World champion, was sixth.
This past Sunday, Sedjati won an 800m in Paris in 1:41.56 to become the third-fastest performer in history behind retired legends David Rudisha of Kenya and Wilson Kipketer of Denmark.
Australian Jessica Hull won the rarely run 2000m in 5:19.70, the fastest time in history. Five days earlier, Hull shattered her own Oceania record in the 1500m and became the fifth-fastest woman in history in that event.
Australian Nina Kennedy won the pole vault with a 4.88-meter clearance, beating a field that included 2024 world leader Molly Caudery of Great Britain (third, 4.83) and Tokyo Olympic gold medalist Katie Moon (fifth, 4.66).
The Diamond League continues on July 20 with a meet in London, live on Peacock.