Heroes and shock winners alike deserve equal applause

For a sport so riddled with narcotic corruption, the World Athletics Championships must have come as a welcome relief from months of negativity, innuendo and outright shame. The action was a wonderful spectacle and in the punditry box it was a treat, as ever, to hear the wise and treacly tones of Michael Johnson.

At the close of play, all talk was of the defeats of Mo Farah and Usain Bolt, and all agreed that these came as a surprise. Johnson, however, added a note of cautionary reality to the misty-eyed analysis.

Yes, these were noteworthy defeats, he said (I paraphrase, due to it having happened late on Sunday night after a long barbecue lunch), but they should be merely a sub-text to the true stories of the games. Everybody who won medals had put in the same level of effort and sacrifice as Farah and Bolt, he pointed out, and they deserved to be the focus of our attention, rather than those stars whose lights had finally been dimmed by age and attrition.