Less than an hour or so after winning the 200m title in 19.52 seconds in Budapest, the American athlete Noah Lyles talked about wanting to transcend the sport. The 26-year-old had just become the fifth man in the 40-year history of the world athletics championships to claim both the 100 and 200m at the same meeting.
His name would be in the record books along with compatriots Maurice Greene, Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay as well as the Jamaican Usain Bolt.
“Okay, knowing that information, what can I do with that?" Lyles wondered. "Is that useful information? If I told the rest of the world that I was the fifth would they get excited?"
He then spoke volubly about the need for the athletics authorities to project the exploits of their star performers.
And it’s not as if they don’t have options. Faith Kipyegon cemented her place as the best middle distance runner of her generation during the Budapest championships. In an astonishing season, the Kenyan has notched up world records in the mile, 1500m and 5000m.
In Hungary, she became the first woman to win the 1500m and 5000m at the same championships.
The 29-year-old hailed her daughter Alyn for inspiring her and reiterated that she wanted to be a motivation for young mothers and girls to pursue their dreams.
Aims
The Burkinabe triple jumper, Fabrice Hugues Zango, spoke in a similar vein. Removing the mental barriers for African youngsters was his line of thought after bronze in Doha in 2019, silver in Eugene last year and gold in Budapest.
“After you get the medals, then you get the times and then more and more people gain interest,” said Lyles. “And now you start being able to go into different directions.
“You can start collaborating with other people and now you have connections and everybody is just like: ‘Oh wow, he knows him or her.’
"And just being in that crowd just boosts the whole idea. Because right now the bar is low. It's low … I mean it's low.
"As I look around this world championships, I don't see Bolt. I don't see Asafa Powell. Where are all these great champions? Why are they not here? Why are we not inviting top level athletes to come watch a world championships?"
Fear that they might overshadow a vapid generation and further diminish the product?
Ambition
Lyles became the first man since Bolt in 2015 to win three gold medals at a championships when he anchored the US team to the 4x100m relay.
There was an instant likeability about Bolt’s laidback cheekiness and horseplay. It also helped that many people can relate to a routine of chicken McNuggets, sleep and some more chicken McNuggets before going out to win Olympic Gold in Beijing.
A spiky campaigner he was not.
“You know, the thing that hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA finals and they have world champion on their head,” added Lyles.
“World champion of what? The United States? Don't get me wrong, I love the US at times but that ain't the world. That is not the world."
Pointing at his fellow 200m medalists he insisted: "We are the world. We have almost every country out here in Budapest fighting, thriving, putting out their flags to show that they are represented. There ain't no flags in the NBA. We got to do more. We got to be presented to the world.”
That projection appears to be at the heart of Sebastian Coe's final term as president of World Athletics which oversees the championships. And it should not be too onerous a task. Athletes from 46 nations won medals over nine days of competition. Men from India and Pakistan battled for gold in javelin.
"If you go a few years back there was no history of javelin in India and Pakistan," said Neeraj Chopra who added world gold to his Tokyo Olympic title.
"Now athletics is very big and the javelin is very big. There were three Indians in the final."
Arshad Nadeem, who threw 87.82m to take silver and Pakistan's only medal at the championships, was munificent in defeat.
"I'm very happy to have won this medal and I'm happy too for Neeraj that he's got his first world championships gold.
"I hope that we will be fighting for one and two at the Olympics. I'm sure people back home will be happy with this medal."
Potential
Witness the wonder, ran the slogan for the meeting. And an Asian one and two in the javelin is unprecedented in the 40-year history of the championships.
Coe, who was reelected just before the start of the Budapest championships, lamented that World Athletics had not been able to exploit similar tales of such magnitude because his outfit has been firefighting since he took over from Lamine Diack in 2015.
Manifold have been the woes. Diack’s corruption-riddled reign and the emergence of state-sponsored doping of athletes in Russia. There were also issues such as transfers of allegiance and organising the calendar of events.
“I'm comfortable now that we've got the building bricks in place," said Coe. "And we can really now genuinely focus on our competitive programmes.
“We have to ask what does that product look like? How do we meet more the lifestyles of young people when we talk about making our sport relevant in the lives of young people?”
A six-episode Netflix might help. Produced by Box to Box Films, it is scheduled to run next summer before the Olympics. The idea is to show what it takes to be the fastest person on the planet.
Show
“I want people to understand the nature of our sport,” said Coe. “For most people it just seems a 10-second process. Our sprinters, like in any other discipline, are probably working around 10 possibly 12, 14, 15 years to do that.
"And I think any anything that lends understanding to just exactly how talented they are has to be welcomed.
"Performance is your passport. But personality and passion are things that people really need to understand. And we have those in bucketloads in our sport.”
The United States topped the medals table with 29. Twelve of them were gold. France - which hosts next year's Olympics - acquired its first medal in the penultimate event of the championships - silver in the men's 4x400m relay. French fans in the National Athletics Centre celebrated with a rendition of La Marseillaise - the French national anthem - as the French runners spoke to reporters.
André Giraud, Patrick Ranvier and Romain Barras, the top dogs at the French athletics federation, will meet the sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra next week for a review of performances. La Marseillaise is unlikely to be sung. France was eclipsed by fellow Europeans. Britain won 10 medals - its best haul since the 1993 world championships in Stuttgart - and Spain claimed four golds and one silver.
Hungary's tally at the world championships was one bronze medal in the hammer. Bence Halász pulled that feat off on 20 August - the St Stephen's Day holiday to celebrate the foundation of the Hungarian state.
Appreciation
"The fans have not looked at this as being just about Hungarian athletics," Coe said. "They have absolutely got behind the very fact that 110 countries are buying tickets to start off with.
"They have not left the stadium or switched off or gone onto the concourse to get a beer when a Hungarian athlete isn't competing, they've just celebrated the extraordinary nature of our sport."
The benefit of the championships to Budapest has been evident. A shiny new sportsdrome in the shape of the National Athletics Centre and green scenes around it along a slither of the river Danube in an area once dominated by a water research centre.
"A true miracle has been built," said local organising committe chairman Adam Schmidt.
"I hope that the experience of the world championships will inspire many people to get moving, to challenge and overcome themselves and to become everyday heroes."
Not a bad set of ambitions at all but perhaps a tad low key for the likes of Lyles.
