Usain Bolt marked his World Championships 100m gold medal by suggesting comparisons with Pele, Maradona and Muhammad Ali.
If ever a man carried a sport on his shoulders, it’s this man, right now.
It was somehow particularly appropriate that the Jamaican’s sixth World Championship triumph came at the principal expense of Justin Gatlin.
The American silver medallist has twice been banned for failing drug tests, though he continues to insist he has never knowingly taken banned substances.
And Bolt’s latest lightning strike, in a suitably apocalyptic Moscow thunderstorm, came in the absence of Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell, two potential rivals for gold who became embroiled in their own doping scandals last month.
Dozens of athletes from the host nation Russia and from Turkey are serving drugs bans.
The credibility of the sport is hanging by a thread, just as cycling’s did through the Lance Armstrong era.
After destroying the challenge of Gatlin and leaving the rest a long way back in his rear view mirror, Bolt once more addressed the drugs question.
He talked of distracting people from the negatives, keeping them on the positive.
“I try to inspire people,” he went on. “I try to motivate everybody, let them know that anything is possible.
“I enjoy showing them and giving them the joy I get out of doing this because they give me the energy to do it so I’m always hungry.”
The sport of athletics – which may well be led from 2015 by London Olympics supremo Lord Coe – must fervently hope Bolt’s hunger is not sated anytime soon.