Greatness brushed Maurice Greene for the second time this summer on an evening when the seventh world track and field championships burst into full flame in Seville's new Olympic stadium.
Just two months after hurtling to a new world 100 metres record of 9.79 seconds, Greene was confirmed as the sport's most riveting personality in winning his first world title in championship best figures of 9.80 seconds. A little more than 20 minutes earlier, Marion Jones had delivered the first part of an American sprint double, putting down the challenges of team-mate, Inger Miller and Greece's Ekaterini Thanou, with an authority which shows no sign of diminishing with the years.
Husband C J Hunter, a massive man in a fisherman's hat who, himself, had won the shot putt title on Saturday, smiled benignly as the arena payed homage to his wife and the rest of the world joined in celebrating a sprinting dynasty.
Greene has won so many of his races without appearing to break sweat this summer, that some of us at least wondered what might happen when the pressure came. This was the evening when the big muscular Canadian, Bruny Surin ensured that we found out.
Running in the lane immediately next to the record holder, Surin refused to be intimated as Greene, completely in character, drove low and hard off the blocks. Instead of the halfway lead to which he is by now accustomed, Greene found himself marginally down at that point and the outline of surprise was vaguely visible.
To his immense credit, however, the favourite dug still deeper in those moments of crisis and holding his nerve, delayed the deceleration process sufficiently to break the indoor champion close to the line. Britain's Dwain Chambers was third.
In terms of exuberance if not yet brashness, Greene reminds of the young Muhammad Ali and within minutes of racing into history, he was jogging back up the track, saluting and shouting at his friends in the stand, overlooking the finishing straight.
"People said that I might fold under pressure but I guess they know better now," he said. "Bruny gave me a harder race than I wanted but it still didn't change anything where it counted - on the finish line. Now I just want to hold this form long enough to win the Olympic title in Sydney."
Surin could derive some consolation that in collecting the silver medal, he equalled Donovan Bailey's Canadian record of 9.84 secs. But no less than those of us on the fringes, he realises that in this mood, Greene is unbeatable.
There is of Marion Jones, a sense of inevitability that reduces even the most ambitious of challenges and Miller and Thanou both knew their places as they finished in the slipstream of the woman who hopes to leave here with no fewer than four gold medals.
"Having someone like her in front of you, makes you `up' your game," said Miller. "It's no longer a case, I hope, of people saying - `Hey, what about that Marion Jones' but the gap. I hope, is closing."
In all honesty, you'd never have guessed it from the manner in which Jones too took charge of the race after just 30 metres. From that point, the rest were running for the minor placings, and now who is to say that she cannot add the 200 metres to her list of triumphs.
Jones's time of 10.70 seconds was a long way removed from Flo Jo's astounding record of 10.49 seconds but questioned on the point she said. "In 50 years time when my grandchildren ask me how I done, I'll be able to tell them that I won. And that is what all Americans understand."
Elsewhere, Hicham El Guerrouj of Marocco and the Kenyan, Noah Ngeny set the scene for a marvellous 1500 metres final tomorrow when winning their races with an ease - bordering on arrogance. Even the Spaniards who had come to cheer the local heroes, Fermin Cacho, Reyes Estevez and Andres Diaz were, in the end, moved to grudging admiration of the manner in which the two Africans stamped their authority.
In seeing off Diaz in a time of 3 mins 36.33 seconds, Ngeny was marginally faster than the defending champion but there was still rich merit in a run which saw El Guerrouj strike out for home long before the bell.
There was, too, an unmistakable aura of brilliance about the performances of the winners of the two women's 800 metres semi-finals, Svetlana Masterkova, Russia's dual Oklympic champion, and the powerful Mozambique athlete, Maria Mutola.
Masterkova, determined to put down markers ahead of the final, chose to win her race the hard way, from the front. And she implemented the strategy so successfully that for all her bravery, Ludmila Formanova was forced to concede over the last 50 metres.
Mutola's winning figures of 1 minute 59.84 seconds were more than half a second slower in the second semi-final by no less than Masterkova. However, hers is a demeanour which suggests that she intends to claim gold in the final.
Karen Shinkins will be hoping to profit from her first visit to the track when she returns to the stadium this morning for the second round of the women's 400 metres championship.
Shinkins, out of the blocks with impressive speed, looked capable of winning the fourth of seven heats when the runners straightened up at the entrance to the home straight. She failed to go through with her run, however, and paying the price of her earlier enterprise, eventually receded to fourth place behind the winner Falilat Ogunkoya of Nigeria, in a time of 52.12 seconds.
Suffering more than most in the conditions, she was undeniably, struggling in the closing stages; And yet at the finer points of her run, there was cause for hope.
"The heat and the atmosphere were both intimidating but hopefully, I can now go away and learn from this experience," she said. "It was a bit of a struggle out there in the closing 50 metres but at least I survived."
Paul McBurney's introduction to big time competition did not meet with the kind of ending that he dared hope, the Belfast man finishing last of eight in his heat of the mens 400 metres in 46.87 seconds.
