It has been a stunning season by any account for Ukrainian high jumper Yuliya Levchenko.

Twelve years is a long time to wait, particularly for a nation like Tanzania, which has no shortage of athletic talent but so often has to play second fiddle to the distance-running superpowers of Kenya and Ethiopia.

Looking up to the greats of your event is one thing, but trying to beat them is quite another. 

For most competitors, athletics is predominantly about championships. The attempt to peak for that one day a year, when the medals are up for grabs, is at the forefront of their minds for the full season leading in. It’s almost as if nothing else matters.

Five years ago Sally Pearson was on top of the world. The Australian 100m hurdler had just claimed the Olympic title in London, to add to the gold medal she won at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu the year before. She was the dominant force in sprint hurdling, and looked set to be the standard bearer for the event for many years to come.

It was not the fastest 400m of Usain Bolt’s career (his lifetime best will go down in history as 45.28, dating back to 2007) but it was a landmark circuit for the Jamaican who has illuminated track and field these past nine years with his superhuman talent and his stellar personality.

The United States topped the medal table at the IAAF World Championships London 2017 with 10 gold medals – and 31 in total – but the championships fittingly climaxed with yet another upset result in the men’s 4x400m with Trinidad & Tobago claiming the title.

Two years ago at the World Championships, Trinidad and Tobago’s men’s 4x400m team followed the US quartet home for silver. Two years on, an inspired performance enabled them to reverse those positions and earn a historic victory as Lalonde Gordon, a part of their quartet for the last five years, found the will to take over the lead in the final 20 metres from the wunderkind last leg runner for the States, Fred Kerley.

After the drama in the men's 4x100m when Bolt pulled up with cramp on the last leg, it was a similar story for Jamaica in the women's 4x400m, as second-leg runner Anneisha McLaughlin-Whilby pulled up injured while in second place.

If there was one athlete likely to live up to a favourite tag at the IAAF World Championships London 2017, it was surely always going to be Caster Semenya.

Heading into these championships, the conventional wisdom was that the men's high jump title was Mutaz Essa Barshim's to lose. Arriving undefeated in six competitions and armed with the seven of the eight best clearances in the world, the Qatari was among the clearest favourites in the British capital over these ten days of competition.

The early stages of the 5000m final played out in an almost identical manner to the 10,000m with Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana making a huge surge after a ponderous opening to proceedings but while the Kenyan challenge fettered away in the 10,000m, Hellen Obiri produced an irresistible burst of speed on the last lap to deny the reigning champion a much vaunted long distance double.