That Farah won was of no surprise, but it was the manner of his 5,000 metres victory that was most devastating. Despite an absence of genuine competition forcing him to run the second half of the race alone, Farah crossed the line in 12 min 59.29 sec, faster than all of his closest rivals have managed in 2016.

Prior to the race Farah had revealed he was not satisfied by a single performance of his so far this year. Now? “Yeah, I’m satisfied with that.” And why shouldn’t he be? This was an all-time great at his free-flowing best.

“People say ‘Farah comes here and doesn’t run fast times’, but if everything’s going well then I’ll try,” he said. “I did try today. It was nice to go straight to the front with the pacemakers and see what I could do. To come away with under 13 minutes is a decent time.”