Nobody knows for sure. Calamitously, on this of all occasions, the Seiko clock alongside the finishing line has not stopped. Up in the press stand, well, what to think?

Looking at the footage on YouTube - that magical well - you can hear that the commentators are fairly sure the Moroccan has bettered the mark of 3min 27.27sec set three years earlier by Algeria’s Noureddine Morceli.

I honestly can’t remember how long it was before confirmation arrived that El Guerrouj had run 3:26.00, which remains the world record.

For some reason I’ve always remembered that weird hiatus. Usually track world-record attempts are either an obvious no-go or a matter of rising excitement as the digital clock ticks down and everybody wills the striving aspirant to still its progress before the magic number arrives.

While El Guerrouj and his cohorts were clearly confident the job had been done the period of time before the figure arrived was, from a reporting point of view, rather like that old children’s programme, The Magic Boomerang, where time stands still while it is in flight.

Judgement was suspended - how were we to describe what we had just witnessed? And what would the line be if the result of that astonishing effort turned out to be 3:27.28?

In the end the "agonisingly close" line was not called for, and we could all go full throttle on "astonishing new mark".

Publicised world-record bids are a legitimate tool for athletes - and meeting promoters - to generate interest among the general public. But the downside of this is, firstly, the often irrational but undeniable sense of let-down when the new mark doesn’t occur. ("But you said there was going to be a world record!")

More damagingly, if there are too many unfulfilled bids, the idea begins to lose traction and cynicism is engendered among spectators. Which is not good for the sport.

That said, and speaking personally, the actual sight of figures never before witnessed - 3:26.00, 9.58, 45.94 - is a thrill. Yes, times - and of course heights, and distances - can be thrilling.

I remember, for instance, watching a new American 200m runner with a strange, clipped, upright style competing in July 1990 on a chill and blustery evening at Edinburgh’s Meadowbank Stadium and winning in… 19.85sec. Sorry?

I recall looking at the digital display in puzzlement. Surely it should be reading 20.85? I felt the time as an almost physical sensation and was aware that this newcomer was something phenomenal.

That turned out to be true. By the time he had retired, Michael Johnson - for it was he - had amassed four Olympic golds and eight world titles over 200 and 400m, and had set world records at both distances.

Seeing the clock stop at 19.32 in the 200m final at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics was another of those tingly-time moments - although it still, frankly, didn’t match the Meadowbank experience.

That said, Johnson himself, in his post-career mode as a commentator upon and analyst of athletics, has tweeted what amounts to a brief but heartfelt manifesto in the aftermath of Saturday’s Diamond League meeting at Birmingham.

And, particularly, in response to a comment by one of that meeting’s most outstanding winners, Britain’s Olympic 800m silver medallist Keely Hodgkinson.

Hodgkinson, who turned 20 in March this year, told Athletics Weekly: "Athletics is such a great sport but I think people need to know what the times mean and get them to understand everything [behind the scenes]."

To which Johnson responded in a tweet: "Great point! People don’t understand or care about times. Focus on competition between the athletes. Narrative is critical. Any race has an automatic narrative, but because we inside the sport are obsessed with times we present the sport that way. And it fails!"

Cue reaction; lots.

James Bowler tweets: "Disagree. Athletics has always had a focus on times and distances, -just look at the Olympic motto. Would Usain Bolt be as famous had he been against a weaker sprinting generation and won his Olympic/World titles in 9.8 or 9.9?"

And again: "Maybe @MJGold can tell us if his amazing 19.32 in Atlanta would have been just as ‘Amazing’ had he won it in 19.82?"

James has a good point. But so does Noah Lyles, the world 200m champion and Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist, who adds his views to the debate: "I’m learning this more and more this year. People fill seats to watch they favorite athletes compete. An average person doesn’t know if that time is fast or not. They just saw that you won and you are fun to watch."

If I sit back and close my eyes… I often fall asleep.

Sorry. Where were we?

Ah yes. If I sit back and close my eyes and think of the moments on the track that have gripped me most strongly as a spectator/reporter, none involve a lone athlete stopping a clock at a particular arrangement of numbers.

Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat, each at the top of their fabulous game in the Sydney 2000 Olympic 10,000m final, Ethiopia versus Kenya, irresistible force versus immoveable object, all the way down the home straight like a couple of sprinters, each envisioning a supreme victory before Gebrselassie comes home nine hundredths of a second ahead - less than Maurice Greene’s margin of victory over Ato Boldon in the 100m final.

From my TV vaults - back at the Meadowbank, watching Ian Stewart and Ian McCafferty move clear of legendary Kenyan Kip Keino in the 1970 Commonwealth Games 5,000m final, and then watching Stewart push the accelerator for a final time to take gold.

From last summer - seeing Karsten Warholm put it all out there as per over the opening stages of the Tokyo 2020 400m hurdles and having enough to finish ahead of the super-talented, super-motivated young challengers Rai Benjamin and Alison Dos Santos to take gold in a time that shattered his own world record - 45.94sec. Sub-46! And Ed Moses himself never broke 47!

A race like that, in an Olympic final, and a world record (indeed two, in a way, as Benjamin beat the mark of 46.70 that stood to Warholm before the gun went on this race) is as much as any event can deliver really.

But you could strip away the Olympic context, and the world record, and you would still have a gripping spectacle, because the essence of any race is doubt, and rivalry. And if that can be focused on two protagonists, like boxers, or maybe fencers, then it has a potency that goes beyond the normal marketing range.

Alex Spink, who covers rugby and athletics for The Mirror, adds his own view to the debate set in train by Johnson: "My experience of covering the sport is that too many within seem to rail against the promotion of rivalries. For the life of me I don’t understand that. As a result track and field gets a fraction of the coverage it could get."

Well how about this. Next Saturday (May 28) in Eugene, Oregon, in the reconstructed Hayward Field arena that will host this summer’s World Athletics Championships, Hodgkinson will take on the marginally younger United States rival who earned 800m gold ahead of her in Tokyo, Athing Mu.

After obliterating a world-class field in Birmingham, Hodgkinson’s focus was immediately on her forthcoming challenge. And she was eager for it. This is the very stuff…