First was Liverpool Football Club’s astonishing come-from-behind win at Newcastle.

In spite of playing much of the match with 10 men after skipper Virgil van Dijk’s dismissal, the Merseysiders prevailed thanks to two late goals from Darwin Núñez - an exploit the original Super Sub David Fairclough would have been proud of.

We had not long got our breath back when Dutch runner Femke Bol blazed around the athletics track in Budapest to catch Jamaica’s Stacey Ann Williams on the line and clinch gold in unforgettable style for the Netherlands in the women’s 4x400 metres relay.

This to cap a session which must have had World Athletics’ geopolitics department beaming, with gold for Ukraine in the women’s high jump and Indian and Pakistani athletes first and second in the men’s javelin.

You can have these intensely dramatic dénouements in scores of events in many sports, but there is something about athletics in general and the 400-metre distance in particular that makes the phenomenon of the come-from-behind victory especially spectacular and memorable when a finishing charge like Bol’s comes off.

In team-sports, I suppose, the range of possibilities is simply too vast and too random for us to experience such triumphs in quite the same way.

Regardless of how well thought-through Liverpool’s match-saving strategy may have been, you could re-stage the last 20 minutes of Sunday’s game a hundred times without the actual outcome being repeated; as Bol took the baton from her team-mate, by contrast, our minds were focused on just two possibilities: either she would overhaul those in front of her, or she wouldn’t.

The tingling anticipation of what might be about to happen appears to be one key ingredient in the most satisfying of these special sporting moments.

But there does still need to be a certain scarcity value.

Track cycling events such as the keirin are set up to induce a frenzied sprint to the line, with the winner sometimes coming through with a perfectly-timed late burst.

For me at least, these frenetic finishes are so tight and so regular that they tend to blur into one, however exciting they might be at the time. 

It is much the same with the sprint finishes that often conclude the flatter Tour de France stages; plus they are subordinate, ultimately, to the main matter in hand: who finishes top of the classement générale and wins the race. 

Speed though is another almost indispensable attribute of a really satisfying come-from-behind win.

This gives athletics the edge over swimming, where a body length’s lead is substantial and deficits must be clawed back painstakingly, inch by inch.

If there is an exception that proves this rule in my mind’s eye, it was Michael Phelps’s remarkable win in the men’s 100m butterfly event at the Athens 2004 Olympics.

The American came from about fifth place at the turn to overhaul compatriot Ian Crocker at the last possible moment.

As for why the 400m distance in running races lends itself so well to memorable come-from-behind wins, this has to be because it provides such a well-balanced test of both speed and endurance.

Athletes must decide their race tactics mindful that if they go off too hard, they may pay the price in the final strides.

The relay adds an element of jeopardy in that a final-leg runner such as Bol is obliged to work with the cards her three team-mates have dealt her.

There may also be a wider spread of abilities than in an individual 400m final, bearing in mind that not all teams will put their fastest runner on the last leg.

So improbably large deficits can sometimes be reeled in.

Bol’s scorching Sunday night run will have evoked different memories for different nationalities.

Australians may have been reminded of Debbie Flintoff-King’s last gasp win over Tatiana Ledovskaya of the Soviet Union in Seoul in the 1988 Olympic final of the women’s 400m hurdles.

For French and indeed British viewers, the reference-point may have been Colette Besson’s astounding and wholly unexpected finishing burst in the thin air of Mexico City that saw her pip Lillian Board on the line to win the 1968 Olympic women’s 400m gold medal.

If there is another sport that can match athletics for the excitement that a perfectly-timed finish can generate, for my money it is horse racing.

This is partly because a significant portion of the audience for any given race will have staked money on the outcome.

But there is also the element of speed, and the extra dimension of the human/equine partnership: the agent in charge of race tactics (the jockey) is dependent largely on his mount’s energy and ability if their combined efforts are to bear fruit.

Even the longest races can produce thrilling late runs which snatch victory from a long-time leader.

One of the most famous renewals of the Grand National at Liverpool in 1973 saw the great Red Rum get up in the final strides to deprive the Australian horse Crisp of what would have been a titanic victory.

Like many horse races, the Grand National is a handicap; in other words, it is designed to produce close finishes, with horses weighted theoretically to finish neck-and-neck. 

Crisp’s thrilling attempt to defy the handicapper, who assigned him the maximum permissible weight, is still viewed by some as the best Grand National run ever, even in defeat.

The past masters at judging speed and distance are flat jockeys, who must cope with faster horses and shorter distances, and the past master of past masters was the great Lester Piggott, who died last year.

Less than five months before Besson’s triumph in Mexico, Piggott rode a horse called Sir Ivor to victory in the Derby at Epsom with an immaculately-judged late burst that saw him sweep to the front, cool as you like, just a few strides before the winning-post. 

This coolness is part of what makes the best come-from-behind victories in horse racing so distinctive and special.

The Daily Mirror journalist whose nom de plume was Newsboy, Bob Butchers, described this as “the greatest piece of race riding that Lester Piggott, or anyone else for that matter, has ever executed”.