It seemed apt that athletics’ biggest and brashest star in Noah Lyles should bring the curtain down on the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 with a second gold medal.

Despite a difficult season partly impacted by injury, he anchored the US quartet to the fifth quickest time in the history for the 4x100m relay.

And in the process, it took his medal tally for Tokyo to three: a bronze in the 100m, gold in the 200m - a fourth consecutive gold in that event - and another gold in the sprint relay.

For an athlete who does not lack confidence, he had already posted on social media details of the athlete after party as if knowing there would be personal cause for celebration late into the Tokyo night.

In heavy rain inside the National Stadium, all but the Australian quartet managed to get the baton around despite the dire weather conditions.

Christian Coleman got the US off to a flying start on the opening leg and, while Canada’s Jerome Blake clawed back some of the deficit to their north American rivals on leg two, Kenny Bednarek ensured Lyles was in the lead on the home straight.

For a brief moment, Andre de Grasse hinted he could threaten an upset for Canada, only for Lyles to pull clear in a world-leading time of 37.29. His split time was only bettered by the aforementioned Blake and Dutch duo Taymir Burnet and Elvis Afrifa.

The pair’s flying legs two and four respectively guided the Netherlands to the bronze in a national record of 37.81.

Following gold for the US four of Coleman, Bednarek, Courtney Lindsey and Lyles, it took the US to 16 gold medals in these championships - more than the next five nations combined on the medal table - and 26 medals in all. In the process, it beat the record 14 golds the team had attained in Doha in 2019.

By Lyles’ standards, it was a relatively muted start to these championships when he was upstaged in the 100m last weekend.

But he has since turned Tokyo into a happier hunting ground. Looking back at the Olympics where he won 100m gold but took bronze at his favoured distance of 200m, he admitted he had been out of sorts and depressed. Here he has been all smiles at every twist and turn.

The form hadn’t looked electric coming in and yet he still produced the climax in front of a Japanese crowd, who cheered their home quartet to the rafters as they finished in sixth place unable to match the world bronze medals of 2017 and 2019 in the same event.

Lyles has already set his sights on Beijing in 2027 and has made no secret of his quest to upstage Usain Bolt, arguably athletics’ all-time biggest star “to become the only man to win five 200m titles”.

Sunday night’s relay gold took his tally of world titles to eight, just three shy of Bolt, whose Jamaican compatriots had failed to make the relay final after a calamitous heat the previous day.

Following his golden finale to these championships, Lyles said: “We all know we are the fastest. We just had to get the baton from start to finish. When Christian passed the baton, I knew it was a done deal. I saw the lead we had and it was kind of a relief as everybody did such a great job. I just had to finish the race. They made it easy for me. I could have not asked for a better relay.”

Matt Majendie for World Athletics