Sometimes getting home from the Olympics can lead to one heck of a reality check. In the case of Rai Benjamin — who won gold in the men’s 400m hurdles and men’s 4×400 relay at the 2024 Paris Olympics earlier this month — it happened on a lunch date with fellow Olympic gold medalist Noah Lyles . After finishing some grub at burger spot Heavy Handed in Santa Monica, Benjamin, 27, took to his Instagram Stories to explain how his meal came with a side of humble pie.
“Ate with this amazing random family from Canada,” Benjamin wrote alongside a photo of three people sitting at a table on Wednesday, August 21. “They knew who [Noah] was. I was unfortunately chopped liver 😂😂😂😂.
” Lyles, 27, couldn’t help but delight in the ordeal, sharing Benjamin’s post to his own Stories with a crying laughing emoji. Since Lyles has returned home from Paris — where he won gold in the men’s 100m and bronze in the 200m — the American sprinter has been a busy man on social media and elsewhere. In a lengthy Instagram post on Saturday, August 17, Lyles defended his girlfriend , Junelle Bromfield , who represented Jamaica in the women’s 400m and 4x400m relay in Paris, from “pure disrespect and hatred towards her from her own country.
” “This woman has been attacked by people who have never met her, heard her name before, never seen her smile, or heard what she believes in,” Lyles, who started dating Bromfield in 2022, continued. “But she keeps moving forwar.