Walking around the centre of Hungary’s capital in the days leading up to these World Athletics Championships, the 19th edition since the first was held in Helsinki 40 years ago, it certainly feels that way.

From the moment you touch down at Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport and see the first giant posters, there is no doubt that there is a major event happening in this city. The ride into the centre takes you along roads lined with more posters urging everyone to "Witness the Wonder", the slogan of these Championships.

The two fan zones located in the city centre were buzzing with excitement on the eve of last night’s Opening Ceremony, the highlight of which was the arrival of the mascot "Youhuu" in a Hungarian fighter jet.  

"It’s a week ago that I arrived in Budapest," Coe said at the official pre-event press conference. "On the first morning I met the Mayor, and on the second morning I met the President. From those opening moments, it has been pretty clear to me that we’re in a World Championships city, and a city that wants us here.

"This is a really important element - and people often overlook this - but it’s a psychological comfort to the athletes that they’re in a city that’s proud to be hosting the event. And it’s totemic of the other elements of work that are taking place.

"I think we’re going to have a Championship that’s going to sit comfortably in this city. And I know that we’re working with one of the best Local Organising Committees (LOC) we’ve ever worked with. The work that has been done has been of an outstanding quality."

The most impressive symbol of this work is the National Athletics Centre which has been built on the eastern bank of the Danube River on the south side of the city. Located on a former brownfield site in a former disused area of the city on an old Vituki industrial estate in Ferencváros, the site and the whole area have been regenerated and after the Championships will become a public park with lots of green spaces, open to everyone.

The Stadium has capacity of 35,000 for these World Athletics Championships before being reduced to 15,000. Once the temporary upper tier is removed, the Stadium will be left with a circular plateau, which can be filled with publicly available leisure areas.

Following the event, the Stadium is set to become the main competition venue and training hub for Hungarian athletics. The plan is that the facility will give a major boost not only to competitive sports, but also to recreational and youth sports. Budapest residents and students will find training tracks, running tracks, street workouts and many other opportunities for sports and recreation.

Balázs Fürjes, Hungary’s former State Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office responsible for the development of Budapest and co-chairman of the LOC, outlined the criteria that they searched for when looking for somewhere to host these World Athletics Championships, which they were awarded in December 2018.

"There were a few guiding principles when choosing location and designing the venue," he told insidethegames in an interview. "First, it was essential that such a venue could only be developed in a way that benefited the city and its citizens also in the long-term.

"It must be legitimate, necessary and useful without the big event too. It should not be built for the event itself.

"Second, when we planned and designed it, we always thought about the city as a whole and not just for a specific piece of land.

"Thirdly, it should be a beautiful, fit-for-purpose, user-friendly stadium of a reasonable size - but it should actually be more than a stadium."

Certainly, my first glimpse of it yesterday as I approached it was impressive, its shining white edifice decorated in World Athletics Championships branding magnified through the torrential rain that marked the start of this event, forcing a delayed start to the programme, before giving way to glorious sunshine and stunning blue skies with fluffy clouds floating joyously along above the magnificent new building.

The Stadium has been designed at a cost of $700 million (£550 million/€650 million) by the competition-winning Hungarian architectural firm Napur Architect Ltd. And built by the Magyar Építő Zrt. construction consortium.

A previously proposed high-rise residential and office buildings on the site have been substituted with low-rise sports and recreational facilities.

Altogether the overall planning area that has been rehabilitated consisted of three main land units. The first land unit was the area of the National Athletics Centre and Park on a 15 hectares area. The second land unit is the area of the Athletic Training Centre, a five hectares area in North Csepel. The third land unit is Hajóállomás Street and its surroundings, a three hectares access area, an area that it is claimed was crucial for the integration of the project into the urban structure.

Beside the Stadium, there is a pedestrian-and bicycle cable bridge connecting the northern tip of Csepel Island and which links the new Athletics Training Centre. In the development area surrounded by the Rákóczi Bridge, there is the Kvassay Barrage and North Csepel new flood-protection barrier, while riverside pedestrian walkways, cycle lanes and boat stations will be built.

By modifying the original development plans, the decisive image of the urban landscape seen from the Danube corridor has become cleaner, Napur Architects claim.

"It is not just a competition venue but also a large training complex," Fürjes told insidethegames. "This is truly a new home of Hungarian elite, college and grassroots athletics.

"This is the regeneration of a previously abandoned, ugly, disused brownfield site. We turned the ‘rust into gold’ and this unused part of the city has become an integral part of Budapest, bringing life back to the riverside. What we have created is in fact a huge green space and public park, fully opened to the people and families, with sports equipment, playing fields, playgrounds and even a local nursery and kindergarten.

"The Stadium occupies only 25 per cent of the newly developed area. It is a win-win-win situation. It is probably the reason why the whole political spectrum has agreed and supports both the project itself and the hosting of the Championships."

This is the second major stadium project that Fürjes has helped deliver in Budapest. He also oversaw the construction of the Puskás Aréna in time for Hungary to stage matches during the UEFA Euro 2020 Championships.

That stadium, which has a capacity of 67,215 and cost $600 million (£475 million/€550 million), was built in the place of the former Ferenc Puskás Stadium.

It is named in honour of the former national team captain Ferenc Puskás.

Earlier this year, it staged the Europa League final between Sevilla and Roma and has been described by football website goal as "one of the most impressive football stadiums in the world and it is a must-see".

Puskás was the star of the "Mighty Magyars", Hungary’s iconic football team, which between 1950 and 1956 played 69 games, recorded 58 victories, 10 draws and just one defeat, in the 1954 FIFA World Cup final against West Germany.

That famous side led by Puskás, still revered around the world, is the embodiment of Hungary’s strong sports identity. The Hungarian Olympic Committee is the sixth oldest in the world, having been founded in 1895, just a year after the International Olympic Committee was established by Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

Hungary made its Olympic debut at the first Modern Games in 1896 and has won a total of 521 medals in the Summer and Winter events, including 183 gold. The country has won more Summer Olympic medals than any other existing nation never to have hosted the Games, and after overtaking Finland at Tokyo 2020, it is now the country with the highest number of gold medals won per capita.

In the last few years, Budapest has established itself as a major centre of hosting major global events. In the last 10 years, the city has hosted World Championships in several sports, including aquatics, fencing, handball, judo, table tennis and wrestling, with athletics being the biggest and most prestigious yet.

It is inevitable; therefore, these World Athletics Championships are seen as a precursor to Budapest launching another campaign to be awarded the Olympics. The capital has previously bid to host the 1916, 1920, 1936, 1960 and 2024 Olympics.

Budapest was seen as dark horses during their last bid but withdrew in 2017 after civil organisation Momentum Movement started a petition and secured enough signatures to have a referendum for Budapest residents if they wanted to organise the Summer Olympics in 2024 or not.

The National Athletics Centre and the $165 million (£130 million/€150 million) Danube Arena, which has hosted the World Aquatics Championships twice, in 2017 and 2022, since it was completed, have both sprung up as a result of that bid.

"The basic premise of the 2024 bid was that for an Olympics in Budapest, we would only need to build things that are useful and necessary for a city of 1.7 million people and the region of four million, even without the Games," Fürjes, who had led Budapest’s bid for 2024, told insidethegames.

"Upgrade public transport and make some road extensions and develop the much needed, reasonably sized venues that would be well utilised in the decades following the Games. One of such venues in the bid was the National Athletics Centre.

"In the Olympic bid, we selected the exact location, acquired the land for public use and outlined the concept for the Athletics Centre. The bid was cancelled in 2017, but it was jointly decided by the Government and the previous Mayor of the city to deliver the project anyway.

"Then in 2017 we started negotiations with World Athletics to deliver the 2023 World Championships. During the Olympic bid, they made their International Federation visit to Budapest, we presented the site and the concept of the venue. They loved it so we just kept the plan and concept and delivered it."

Under Viktor Orbán, currently serving his second term as Prime Minister having been re-elected in 2010 following a previous four-year term that ended in 2002, sport has become an important extension of Hungary’s foreign policy. It has inevitably drawn criticism and been dismissed as an attempt at trying to deflect attention from Orbán’s policies on everything from human rights to democracy to a European Union-leading inflation rate of 17.6 per cent on the year as of last month.

"Do countries use sports?" Coe said here last week. "Of course, they do. Every country wants to showcase itself through sport. The one thing I can tell you is that I’ve never been involved in a sport that’s gone anywhere, particularly into challenging environments, where it has left that society politically, culturally, socially worse off."

The Momentum Movement, who have used their initial opposition to Budapest 2024 as a platform to establish itself as a fully-fledged political entity, allege that Orbán’s party Fidesz have, by stealth, built a series of high-quality venues to ensure that the next time Hungary bids for the Olympics it is in a stronger position to be successful.

The Hungarian political landscape is complicated, and the World Athletics Championships found itself dragged into a row when Gergely Karácsony, a founding member of Dialogue for Hungary, a left-wing green party, was elected Budapest Mayor in 2019 and announced he would not back the event.

A late deal for him to back the event was officially announced only a week before the Championships opened.

"Politics is politics," said Fürjes. "We have a right-wing Government for 13 years. In 2019, when the left took over the Budapest City Council after a long period of time [out of power], they attacked the Government, saying the project was ‘wrong’ and Budapest does not need the event.

"Then the campaign was over, the parties started talking and listening to each other. The opponents understood the gains and the two sides agreed on how the whole development and event could benefit Budapest even more.

"There were some misunderstandings at the last minute, but eventually everything was achieved, and unity has been achieved.

"Sport really does unite, as we have experienced in Budapest. I am very happy that the Championships can be a joint achievement of the political right and left, the National Federation, the city and the National Government. Great things require a broad collation, and such events must only be staged if the people and representatives of the host city fully support them. This is now the case in Budapest."

With Paris and Los Angeles having been awarded the 2024 and 2028 Olympics, respectively, after Budapest withdrew and Brisbane having been given the Games in 2032 without a proper election process, it means the next opportunity to bid is for 2036.

The official position in Hungary is that an Olympic bid is not currently being discussed, but it is clear that everything the country is doing by hosting these major events is about putting itself in a place that it will be impossible to turn down next time.

"The Budapest Olympics is the nation’s 100-year dream, and an Olympic nation must never give up on its dreams," Fürjes told insidethegames. "The new system for selecting host cities is encouraging for cities like Budapest and regions like Central Europe.

"So, when the time is right, we will definitely consider it. 

"But only on the condition that social support is broad, firm and strong. Dreaming is nice, but delivering is difficult.”

The early signs from these World Athletics Championships, is that they are definitely delivering. 

In the land of the Rubik’s cube, the National Athletics Centre could be the last piece in helping Budapest complete its Olympic puzzle.