A feast of front-running on the final evening in the Bird’s Nest national stadium brought the programme of athletics, the premier Olympic sport, to a fitting conclusion.

Kenenisa Bekele went a long way, not simply in his 5,000m victory - towards restoring faith in Ethiopian distance runners. After the mind-numbing tedium of the race by his colleague, Tirunesh Dibaba, who won the women’s event the previous night, Bekele put on a master-class performance.