Primo Nebiolo, the International Amateur Athletics Federation's (IAAF) controversial president, yesterday dismissed the cast of the sixth World Championships with an official invitation to join a bigger, more extravagant drama in the next staging of the championships at Seville in two years' time. Just what they will find there remains in some doubt after a presentation in Athens which fudged almost as many issues as it answered.

Nebiolo is convinced that he has established this event as a major focal point on the international sporting calendar. The man, who went on record recently saying that he wants to see athletics in the headlines for 12 months of every year, is so enthusiastic about his special concept that he wants to extend it for an extra day in Seville.

And that strikes at the heart of a problem which for many devalued the programme that has just ended. For them, it has become drawn out for reasons which have less to do with sport than commerce.

Far from agreeing with Nebiolo's expansionist policies, they believe that the more beneficial measure would be to condense the championships into a six-day programme. While such a move could affect those athletes wishing to double up in events, opinion is that this is not necessarily a cause of regret.

The incidence of more positive doping tests involving Russian athletes is another disturbing manifestation of a problem which refuses to go away and which has scarcely been eased by the relaxation of disciplinary measures announced at the IAAF Congress immediately before the championships.

Furthermore, with the championships now held every two years, there was a heavy element of inevitability in the placings in events which, with the notably exception of the men's sprints, went largely to form. To some extent, that devalued the event as a spectacle.

Yet, to dismiss the Athens festival as another example of the sport's proliferation of problems would be plainly unfair. There was, for example, an impressive illustration of Greek organisation, flawed only by the dismal response of the public it was designed to serve.

That suggested that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was right in taking the Centennial Games to Atlanta, but in terms of the logistical exercise, the Greek performance was above reproach.

There were, too, some marvellous individual achievements to enrich the programme, notably in the 5,000 metres in which Daniel Koeman showed yet again that, at 21, he has an extraordinary talent.

Koeman, perhaps the most convincing illustration yet of the coaching skills of the Irish Patrician Brother, Colm O'Connell - who also introduced two other recently crowned champions, Wilson Kipketer and Sally Barsossio, to the sport - may yet turn out to be the most gifted of the Kenyan super stars. Certainly nobody who witnessed that explosion of power in the middle stages of Sunday's final will doubt his potential to push out the frontiers of distance running.

Haile Gebrselassie, a man who adorns the sport on and off the track, was another glittering star of the championships, winning the 10,000 metres with elegance and setting up a mouth-watering duel with Koeman over 5,000 metres in Zurich tomorrow.

Elsewhere, Sergey Bubka reached out yet again for acclaim as one of the greatest athletes of modern years with a sixth consecutive win in the pole vault.

From an Irish perspective, Athens was less a cause for reassurance than an occasion of concern. On the credit side, Susan Smith again illustrated her imposing rate of development as a 400 metres hurdler, and Gary Ryan continues to impress as our best sprinter of recent years.

Against that, however, there is reason to believe that we may have seen the best of Sonia O'Sullivan as a world-class athlete. In spite of the disturbing lessons of Atlanta, and the difficult months which followed, there was some reason to believe that she could emerge triumphant from the deepest crisis of her career in Greece. This she failed to do and now the gathering clouds are darker still as she prepares to take a short break to reflect on the troubles which have overtaken her in the last 12 months.