The Big Three Really Race For The First Time Since Tokyo

This week’s men’s 400mH race was already set to be one of the best of the season, as world record holder Karsten Warholm and 2022 World champ Alison dos Santos were bound to go head-to-head for the second time this year. The first matchup went the Brazilian’s way, taking down Warholm on his home turf in Oslo. Then, earlier this week, world leader Rai Benjamin popped onto the start list, marking his first European Diamond League race since 2019.

These three are the three fastest men in the history of the long hurdles, and they collectively hold the 15 fastest times ever (four of those having already been run this year). Their showdown in the Olympic final in Tokyo was one of the single greatest races ever, as Warholm took the event sub-46, Benjamin ran the second-fastest time ever, and dos Santos, who was only 21 at the time, inched under Kevin Young’s world record which had stood for 29 years before Warholm broke it a month before the Games. However, in the two-and-a-half years since, we have yet to see this trio meet at the peak of their powers.

In 2022, Warholm was still dealing with the effects of a torn hamstring by the time the World Championships rolled around. He finished seventh in the final, where dos Santos put the bow on an undefeated season with the third-fastest time ever. In 2023, it was dos Santos struggling to come back from injury. Whether or not he would even run in Budapest was up in the air throughout most of the summer, but he still managed a very impressive fifth in the final. The last time we saw these three on the same track was at the Pre Classic last September, but dos Santos was still a bit off 100%.

Luckily for the fans, all signs point towards each man being in great shape right now. Benjamin has the world lead with his 46.46 from the U.S. Trials, but dos Santos and Warholm aren’t far behind, all having dipped well below 47 seconds in 2024. The Big Race is still three-and-a-half weeks away, but Friday will offer a glorious taste of what’s on the horizon. Given how infrequently this matchup happens, we need to savor every chance we get to see it.

Behind them, NCAA champion Caleb Dean and Jamaican champ Malik James-King have broken out in big ways this year. They sit at four and five on the 2024 lists and have moved into the 25 fastest men all-time. For Dean, it will be his first race since an unfortunate fall on hurdle eight in the finals of the U.S. Trials.

The 800m Will Be Ridiculous Once Again…

Five days after the fastest 800m race in history (by average time of the top eight finishers), many of the same men will be back on the track once again this week at Stade Louis II, with a handful of exciting new entries.

Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati will be the headliner Friday afternoon, fresh off becoming the third-fastest man in history in 1:41.56. The 25-year-old has won every race he’s entered this year, and each 800m win has come via a devastating kick. In Stockholm he was sixth at the bell, excluding pacers, and was in third through one lap in Paris, but came on top in both. His ability to win races at seemingly any pace with his sit and kick style is a terrifying prospect for his competitors, and this race will be a golden opportunity to fully solidify his spot as the favorite for Paris.

European champion Gabriel Tual, who finished third in Paris and became the sixth-fastest man ever with a 1:41.61 clocking, will be back on the track and looking for revenge. Interestingly, Tual actually closed his final 400m last week about a tenth-of-a-second faster than Sedjati, but simply ran out of track. The second-place finisher from Paris, Emmanuel Wanyonyi, didn’t make the trip to Monaco, but fellow Kenyan Aaron Kemei, who became the T-10th-fastest in history Sunday morning, and newly-minted Belgian and Swedish national record holders Eliott Crestan and Andreas Kramer did.

The new challengers this week are highlighted by reigning World champion Marco Arop. The 25-year-old Canadian raced three times in June, but his last 800m against true competition was back on April 20th (winning the Xiamen Diamond League in 1:43.61). He looked great when he raced last month, running 1:43.53 and 1:43.71 completely solo on back-to-back days at Canadian Championships, but he’ll need a huge step up to hang with the form we saw from the other men in this field last week. His PB sits at 1:42.85 from last year’s Prefontaine Classic, but I doubt that mark will survive to next week.

The other new faces in the mix are Bryce Hoppel and Ben Pattison, coming to Monaco fresh off winning their countries’ Trials races against impressive fields. Hoppel broke the 1:43 barrier for the first time in his career in the final in Eugene, running 1:42.77, but the World Indoor champ from March could need another big improvement just to prove competitive in Friday’s race. Pattison’s win at the British Trials in Manchester came in 1:45.49, but given the conditions that weekend the victory was impressive nonetheless.

… But They Don’t Get To Have All The Middle Distance Fun

If the world lead in the men’s 1500m isn’t set on Friday, I will eat my metaphorical hat. As things stand, Jakob Ingebrigtsen owns that mark with his 3:29.74 clocking from Oslo at the end of May. He’s since won European and Norwegian titles in both the 1500m and 5000m, but this will be his first race of this style in over a month, and he should be much fitter than he was a week after his delayed season debut.

Will the time be in range of his 3:27.14 European record he ran almost exactly one year ago in Silesia? Potentially, but it should at least be very quick with Ingebrigtsen at the front running alongside an incredibly talented field.

Including the reigning Olympic champion, eight of the 11 fastest men in the world this year will be racing in Monaco. Timothy Cheruiyot is the only other man that has broken 3:30 this season, losing to Ingebrigtsen’s dramatic dive in Oslo by only .03 seconds. The World champ from Doha has a pair of second-place finishes at Diamond Leagues to his name this year, but hasn’t won a race on the circuit at this distance in nearly three years. Yared Nuguse, the silver medalist at World Indoors over 3000m and at the U.S. Trials over 1500m, will be racing for the first time this outdoor season outside of the United States. Coming off a loss to Cole Hocker at the Trials, Nuguse will be looking for something big to stake his claim as not just a medal threat, but a favorite, heading into Paris.

Other men in the field that have PBs under 3:30 include Australia’s Olli Hoare, France’s Azeddine Habz, and Norway’s Narve Nordås. In a field this talented and on a track as fast as this one, we could see several other men crack that barrier for the first time.