On a night when Australia’s Olympic 100m hurdles champion Sally Pearson was taken to hospital after injuring her left wrist in a heavy fall, the controversial 33-year-old former Olympic champion, who has received two doping bans, produced the seventh fastest time in history to better Bolt’s 2012 time of 9.76 in the Stadio Olimpico.

The American  sprinter’s effort was just 0.01 off the 2015 world-leading time of 9.74 he recorded in winning the opening Diamond League meeting of the season in Doha last month.

Gatlin, whose award of a new Nike contract this season aroused widespread condemnation from within the athletics community, finished almost a quarter-of-a-second ahead of his nearest challengers, Jimmy Vicaut of France and fellow American Mike  Rodgers, who clocked 9.98.

The men’s 5,000m was won by a boy, or at least a youth, as Ethiopia’s 17-year-old prodigy Yomif Kejelcha, the world junior champion, repeated his startling performance at last month’s Eugene Diamond League meeting by producing the year’s best time so far of 12min 58.39sec in a closely contested race in which Kenya’s Paul Kipngetich Tanui beat Kejelcha’s fellow countryman Hagos Gebrhiwet to the line, with both men being credited with 12:58.69.

The 100m hurdles ended up resembling a battlefield, with Pearson – who nosedived after clipping the fifth hurdle – clearly in great pain, and with American world champion Brianna Rollins another faller in the lane next to her.

Race favourite Jasmin Stowers of the United States, fastest in the world this year, hit the seventh hurdle and barely got over the eighth before eventually staggered through the carnage in a time of 25.21 – which, just for the record, was 12.86 off last month’s personal best at the Doha Diamond League.

By that time the rest of the field were already deciding what to do with the rest of their evening, the race having been won in a personal best of 12.52 by Stowers’ compatriot Sharika Nelvis, with 2008 Olympic champion Dawn Harper-Nelson second in 12.59.

There were two national records in a dramatic men’s javelin, although neither of them were recorded by the winner, the Czech Republic’s world champion Viteslav Vesely, who decided throwing 88.14 metres in the second round, just 20 centimetres short of his personal best, would be good enough to earn maximum points.

Vesely was right – but only just, as Kenya’s Commonwealth champion Julius Yego improved his own national record to 87.71m in the fourth round, and Keshorn Walcott, Trinidad and Tobago’s surprise London 2012 champion, also set a national record of 86.20m with his last effort.

Cuba’s Pedro Pablo Pichardo, who has recorded the fourth and third best triple jumps of all time within the last month – winning the Doha Diamond League in 18.06m and adding two centimetres to his national record in Havana a fortnight later – finished with a meeting record of 17.96m.

Croatia's former world high jump champion Blanka Vlasic, whose career has been undermined by serious Achilles tendon injuries in recent years, produced a sharp effort in her first competition of the year, taking second place with 1.97m behind veteran Spanish jumper Ruth Beitia, who cleared 2.00m, the best in the world so far this year.

IAAF World Athlete of the Year Renaud Lavillenie won the pole vault as expected, but seemed a little underwhelmed by his best effort of 5.91m.

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