Born into a family of international cricketer, wanted to be a Rugby quarterback but he eventually became a track and field athlete. Not only that, he also won Olympics gold in his event!
Guessing who is he? He is not other than the Caribbean-American athlete Rai Benjamin who won men’s 400metres hurdles at the Paris Olympics 2024 beating Norwegian world record holder Karsten Warholm and Brazil’s Alison dos Santos.
Rai won silver at 2019 and 2022 World Championships, he also won silver at the Tokyo Olympics and he was desperate to win a hold at the Paris Games. That he did in style.
Speed seems to be always in Rai’s blood. Former West Indian fast bowler Winston Benjamin is Rai’s father. Benjamin represented the West Indian side in 21 Tests and 95 ODI’s. Rai also played cricket in his school days and a batsman was what he wanted to be. But his highschool athletics coach thought otherwise and convinced him to be a track and field athlete instead.
When he was way home from New York to Antigua on November 11, 2001, the Twin Towers in New York was attacked and his flight had to land in Puerto Rico. Rai was forced to stay in the country for weeks. However he did not leave the USA. Before the Doha World Championships, he took US citizenship. And thus began a new sporting career.
Rai was born in New York and he is a graduate in Political Science. It was Jeanette Mason, his mother on whom Rai was mostly depended upon returning from Antigua to the US. And rightly so Rai has dedicated his Olympics medal to his mother.