Victory at last for Justin Gatlin over his old foe made for a perplexing weekend for those seeking to stage manage the World Athletics Championships as ugly old issues rose to the surface and the American was by no means the principal villain of the piece. For all the eulogising there has been about audiences in London’s Olympic Park and how knowledgeable they are their collected ignorance was exposed by the grace shown by Usain Bolt on realising that his old rival had snuck up on the rails.

For Gatlin it had been as if being released from the immediate vicinity of the man in whose shadow he has been beaten by through most of his career(s), allowed him to focus fully on running his own race. Bolt had also been beaten by Gatlin’s 21-year-old team-mate Christian Coleman, but when the finishing order was revealed on the big screen those who had jeered Gatlin at every opportunity, while heartily applauding many others who have undergone doping bans, had their opportunity to unleash their fury at having been let down on the historic night they had been gearing themselves up to be a part of.

The warm embrace in which the Jamaican wrapped the race winner on realising his farewell party had been gate-crashed in the most unwelcome fashion put this mass hysteria to shame. Meanwhile Liz McColgan, someone whose history entitles her to be taken very seriously as Scotland’s only individual world champion, was very publicly raising rather more pertinent questions.

After watching Almaz Ayana lap most of the field in her own former discipline of 10,000 metres, some of them twice, the 1991 winner of the event took to social media to declare her scepticism about, in particular, the lack of dope testing in the new champion’s home nation of Ethiopia. That led to a vigorous response on Twitter, some of the details of which it would probably be legally unwise to reprint given the names brought into a discussion. The contributors to the debate included Ian Beattie, the chairman of Scottish Athletics who was among those who sought to rebuke McColgan, only to receive a typically sharp riposte.

The inability of this sport’s administrators to come up with a uniform set of regulations and procedures to deal with its biggest problem is the real issue and having handled himself so well in the immediate aftermath of the race Bolt was less gracious later in the evening when asked what many would consider a perfectly valid question relating to an apparent drop in standards in his event as compared with previous years. A number had already been directed to both men in the post-race press conference relating specifically to Gatlin and his suitability to be world champion, but one questioner broadened it out by asking about there having been poorer times overall at this World Championships, noting that the medal winning times had been the slowest since 2003, that there had been fewer than 10 sub-10 second times in the event this time around as compared with 21 two years ago in Beijing and asking whether they saw any correlation between that and the tightening of doping restrictions.

Bolt might plausibly have washed his hands of that one by pointing out, as was obvious to all, that his own relative failure this time around had been down to the starting problems that were self-evident as he struggled out of the blocks in all three rounds. Instead he leapt onto the defensive, generating laughter as he responded with a disbelieving: “Woah, woah, woah, what? What? What is she saying?” When she bravely repeated herself the man who had been beaten by and was sitting alongside a two time doping offender branded her question ‘very disrespectful’ to all three medallists. Gatlin, who had similarly behaved with considerable dignity in the face of much provocation from the crowd, now found the chance to pursue common cause with his old rival as he took the chance to let off some steam.

“We are human beings,” said the world champion. “We still have to perform and work hard. We train every day when you guys are typing on your computers. We get injuries and strains. Of course sometimes our times are not going to be best.”

Once more, as has been the case with Mo Farah amid the repeated questions about the practices of his coach Alberto Salazar, pot shots were being taken at a messenger who had done her job properly by putting in some homework, leaving us to wonder just how those advocating clean sport want the difficult questions to be asked.