Having been lent the use of a phone in the press box by a certain outstanding Scottish journalist - let us call him Doug Gillon, as that is his name - McKean ignored a series of urgent prompts while he exchanged celebratory sweet nothings with his distant wife.

As preparations for his medal ceremony began in the Toronto Skydome’s cavernous main arena, McKean scrambled for the only means of reaching ground level - the notoriously slow lifts.

By the time his desperate form was seen racing towards the podium, the closing bars of the National Anthem were already sounding out. McKean’s second sprint finish of the day proved sadly less effective than his first.

Shortly after the Skydome had opened in April 1990, while a baseball match was underway between the hosts, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Seattle Mariners, the collective attention of the 60,000 spectators present had been drawn to an overlooking room in the hotel which is built into the complex, where a couple were to be seen making love.

By the time the World Indoors arrived in Canada - organised by what was still known as the International Amateur Athletics Federation - the hotel required guests in stadium-facing rooms to sign a waiver acknowledging the need to draw the curtains in the event of any outbreaks of amorousness.

“Nobody has refused to sign it yet,” said the hotel’s front-of-house manager. “People get a real kick out of it.”

Sadly the same could not be said for the Championships themselves, which conspicuously lacked stellar performers such as Sergei Bubka, Quincy Watts and Carl Lewis, and also missed the presence of Canada’s very own hero-to-zero Ben Johnson, the sprinter stripped of the 1988 Olympic 100m title for doping, who was banned for life shortly before the action got underway after a second positive test.

The opening and closing ceremonies took place with virtually no spectators present. More tellingly, the arena was little more than a third full for the bulk of the action, and the official three-day sales total of 79,919 included large numbers bought up by sponsors such as Coca-Cola and distributed to schoolchildren.

Two years later, in Barcelona, a hugely underwhelming competition left the status of the World Indoor Championships open to question. The then IAAF President, Primo Nebiolo, reacted angrily to the late withdrawal of Britain’s world and Olympic 100m champion, Linford Christie, who was the highest profile performer among the relatively few top-drawer competitors.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Michael Johnson and Gwen Torrance were all absent from a severely weakened US team – which was a particular embarrassment to Nebiolo, who had recently signed a lucrative deal with US TV.

The fact was, for most top performers, there was money to be made elsewhere on the indoor circuit, and the IAAF World Indoor Championships were unpaid. Nebiolo, characteristically, described the Championships to have been of “superb quality.”

But the danger signs were writ large in the Palau Sant Jordi, and two years later both the indoor and outdoor versions of the World Championships offered “IAAF Competition Awards.”

Coincidentally, the 1997 World Indoor Championships in the Palais Omni-Sports de Paris-Bercy - which had hosted the Championships' precursor, the 1985 World Indoor Games - produced arguably the finest individual performance yet seen in this event.

Wilson Kipketer, Denmark’s adopted Kenyan, broke the world 800m record twice, in both his heat and the final.

His opening run saw him take nearly a second off the mark of 1 min 44.84 sec set in 1989 by Paul Ereng. And he claimed gold by taking another second of the record as he ran 1:42.67.

These remain the two fastest indoor 800m runs. In his heat, Kipketer finished more than four seconds clear of the next runner. And after a conservative semi-final victory in 1:48.49, the man in the form of his life concentrated his formidable powers and finished more than three seconds clear of the silver medallist, Mahjoub Haida, whose 1:45.76 was a Moroccan record.

I saw both world records. It was not just the huge lead which signalled Kipketer was running at an unprecedented level, but the grace of his movement. He was easy as a gazelle. It was as if he had found a new way to run, like Dick Fosbury re-inventing the high jump.

Almost two decades on from that peerless Paris performance, the latest World Indoor Championships are set fair to be one of the most uplifting since the event was last held on US soil – the very first running of 1987, in Indianapolis.

Competitors in the Oregon Convention Center over the next four days will be chasing a prize money total of $2.5 million (£1.7 million/€2.1 million), with $40,000 (£28,000/€35,000) on offer to each winner. There is also a $50,000 (£35,000/€44,000) bonus for any athlete setting a world record.

But it is hard to imagine any athlete meriting that money more than Kipketer did on those two days in March 1997.