A stupendous night of athletics here produced the result that most people wanted to see as Usain Bolt beat Justin Gatlin to earn a third consecutive Olympic 100 metres title in 9.80sec, but even that huge feat was overshadowed by the performance of South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk as he won 400m gold from lane eight in a world record of 43.03, breaking Michael Johnson’s 17-year-old mark.

Will the Rio 2016 athletics programme, which gets underway tomorrow, become part of the Usain Bolt Narrative in the way that Beijing and London have already been?

Victory in the 5000m at the US Olympic Track and Field Trials earned 41-year-old Bernard Lagat the right to become the oldest US runner at what will be his fifth Olympics - but for world 110m hurdles record holder Aries Merritt, desperate to defend his title in Rio 10-months after kidney replacement surgery, that dream is over; by one hundredth of a second.

As the US Olympic Track and Field trials in Eugene, Oregon pause to draw midweek breath, stellar performer Allyson Felix, who plans to double up over 200 and 400m at next month’s Rio Olympics, can reflect upon a task half done.

Justin Gatlin and Trayvon Bromell, as expected, filled the first two 100 metres places at the US Olympic Track and Field Trials at Hayward Field in Eugene on a day when Allyson Felix backed up half of her ambition to double up in Rio 2016 by winning her 400m final.

Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay should be banned from the Olympic Games, along with all other convicted doping cheats, United States middle distance runner Alysia Montaño claimed here today. 

Six-times Olympic champion Usain Bolt of Jamaica has been announced as the first name on the longlist for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) men’s Athlete of the Year award following the closure of the opening round of voting.

This year’s World Athlete of the Year award will not be open to athletes who have had serious doping suspensions, such as Justin Gatlin, the twice-sanctioned US sprinter whose shortlisting last year caused a huge outcry and prompted a boycott from another nominated athlete, Germany’s Olympic discus champion Robert Harting.

Christian Taylor tonight won another significant triple jump battle against his arch-rival, Cuba’s Pedro Pablo Pichardo, as he earned the overall Diamond Race victory, along with the winner’s prize of $40,000, in the final International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Diamond League meeting of the season in Brussels.

On a night when Ashton Eaton of the United States beat his own world decathlon record with a score of 9,045 points, and Britain’s Mo Farah collected a seventh consecutive global title, Usain Bolt secured an 11th World Athletics Championships gold by anchoring Jamaica to victory in the men’s 4x100 metres relay.

For the second time in four days, Usain Bolt held off the challenge of Justin Gatlin of the United States here to complete his world 100/200 metre double in 19.55sec, the fastest 200m time run this year, and conclude a rare night of athletics that had already been punctuated with a historic triple jump of 18.21m by Christian Taylor, the second best ever achieved.

I had an exciting, if rather terrifying experience, today when called in to do a television interview on CNN’s World Sport programme about the weekend’s 100 metres showdown between Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin.

Usain Bolt resisted the challenge of the world’s fastest man this year, Justin Gatlin, to retain his world 100 metres title here tonight in what he described as his “hardest race.”

Mo Farah won his sixth consecutive global title here tonight to lay claim to being Britain’s best ever championship performer.

It has been another of those weeks in sport when doping is the only real story.