For Rai Benjamin, clearing the next hurdle will take something special

Rai Benjamin finds the question hard to answer, but he replied succinctly nonetheless.

“My outlook for this year?” he paused. “Run a lot faster than I did back in August.”

Won’t be easy.

Back in August, Benjamin crushed the men’s 400m hurdles world record by .53 of second at the Tokyo Olympics. But the Norwegian in the lane to his right, Karsten Warholm, obliterated the world record, going .76 faster than the best time in history and breaking the record for the second time in 33 days.

Benjamin became the first person to better the existing world record in an individual Olympic track and field final to win silver, not gold, in 41 years. The next day, the same thing happened to countrywoman Dalilah Muhammad in the women’s 400m hurdles. Muhammad, unlike Benjamin, already had an individual gold medal from 2016.

In his aftermath, through tearful interviews, Benjamin said he may need a while to digest his unique Olympic experience from a unique Olympics. He rewatched the race for the first time two months later.

“I could literally walk anyone through that race, vividly, from my standpoint, and tell them what I was thinking between every single hurdle,” he said. “Just to watch it back from somewhat of a third-person point of view, and mesh that with the first-person point of view that I myself have, I think that was really important.”

By December, he fully processed the 46-second race, plus everything surrounding it in Japan.

“It took me a long time to come away from not only my event, but the fact that we were in Tokyo for so long, and all I saw was my roommates, and that’s it,” said Benjamin, who stayed with his Southern California roommate Michael Norman, plus four more U.S. track and field athletes. “It wasn’t much of an