With the Opening Ceremony on 26 July and some competitions starting the day before, athletics will be at the heart of the second week of Paris 2024, with great battles and great moments to prove once again why it is called the 'King Sport' of the Olympic Games.

Rai Benjamin claimed the spoils in a clash of the hurdling titans at Friday's Monaco Diamond League as Djamel Sedjati and Quincy Hall both set world leads in perfect fine-tuning for the Paris Olympics. Another stunning night of track and field in perfect conditions at the Stade Louis II saw Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen set a European record of 3min 26.73sec in the 1500m.

Karsten Warholm insisted on Thursday he would not be using a magic wand in his bid to defend his Olympic 400m hurdles title at the Paris Games in three weeks. Warholm, 28, smashed the world record to win gold in the Tokyo Olympics, clocking a stunning 45.94 seconds to win ahead of American Rai Benjamin (46.17) and Brazil's Alison Dos Santos (46.72).

Three-time world champion Grant Holloway punched his ticket to the Paris Olympics on Friday in the 110m hurdles at the US trials, while Noah Lyles and Sha'Carri Richardson cruised into the 200m finals. Holloway won the 110 hurdles final in 12.86secs, the fastest time in the world this year, with Freddie Crittenden second in a personal best 12.93 and Daniel Roberts third in a personal best 12.96.

American Rai Benjamin won the men's 400m hurdles in a world-leading 46.64 seconds at the USATF Los Angeles Grand Prix on Saturday as Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone posted an impressive 200m victory, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday. 

Jakob Ingebrigtsen rounded off the opening night of the Wanda Diamond League final in Eugene by winning the Bowerman Mile in 3min 43.73sec, the third fastest time ever run and just 0.60sec shy of Hicham El Guerrouj's 1999 world record.

Christian Coleman marked his first 100 metres since winning the world title in 2019 with victory at the Golden Grand Prix today in Tokyo’s National Olympic Stadium, even though he looked less than comfortable in clocking 10.09 seconds.

Home sprinter Ferdinand Omanyala won the concluding 100 metres at the Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi in 9.85sec - the fastest time of the season so far - to ignite scenes of joy in a crowd which included the Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta.

The newly renovated Hilmer Lodge Stadium in Walnut, California will take on the aspect of a sprinter’s paradise tomorrow as some of the world’s finest exponents converge in what are expected to be a series of intriguing match-ups.

The message is out there - "Tell your people to contact my people and let’s give THE PEOPLE what they want." Pure hype. Bring it on.

Norway’s Karsten Warholm won one of the great Olympic finals here today to claim men’s 400 metres hurdles gold, taking almost a second off his own world record as he finished ahead of his United States rival Rai Benjamin in 45.94sec.

Achieving a world record at the Olympic Games is the ultimate track and field achievement, but as the athletics programme gets underway tomorrow morning at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, a little short of five years since the last one in Rio de Janeiro, it is prospective personal rivalries that command attention.

Grant Holloway and Rai Benjamin were close to setting new world records in the men's 110 metres hurdles and 400m hurdles on the seventh day of the United States Olympic Team Trials in Eugene in Oregon; as they booked their place at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Twenty-one-year-old Kenyan Beatrice Chebet produced an outstanding performance at the second Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season in Doha as she defeated a field of world class talents to win the women’s 3,000 metres in the fastest time of the year.

Venezuela's Yulimar Rojas is in awesome form as she prepares to compete in tomorrow night's second Diamond League meeting of the season at the Khalifa Stadium in Doha, where she retained her world triple jump title in 2019.