As he turned, impassively, from a final embrace with the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) President Lamine Diack and returned to the fleet of black limousines which had transported him to this stately stadium – the moment many grounded buses and frustrated passengers were devoutly awaiting – you felt he must be mentally applying another big tick in the box marked "High Prestige Projects".

Vladimir Putin (right) and Lamine Diack at the 2013 IAAF World
Championships opening ceremony

But now the President has gone, the question will be exactly how high the prestige of these championships will be by the end of the nine days of competition.

The 14th IAAF World Championships have arrived amid turbulent times, not just for the sport, which has suffered a slew of awkward doping positives on the eve of the competition, but the Russian Government, which is now trying to safeguard its grand new sporting ambitions amid a worldwide furore which has been set in motion by the recent law passed here forbidding open discussion of gay rights or gay issues.

Sebastian Coe insisted here that calls for the Sochi 2014 Winter Games to be boycotted in the wake of these controversial laws are misplaced. Speaking at the stadium where he had won Olympic silver and then gold 33 years ago, the IAAF vice-president and British Olympic Association (BOA) chairman said: "I'm against boycotts. I don't think they achieve what they set out to do. They only damage one group of people, and that's the athletes. I'm a believer that relationships develop through international sport, often in the infancy of social change. I believe that going to Moscow in 1980 was the right thing to do and 10 years later we saw those changes.

"International sport is not an inhibitor of social change, it actually has a strong catalytic effect. It's an issue that will need to be addressed, but it's not an issue that warrants a boycott."

Asked about Stephen Fry's open letter which likens the Sochi Games to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Coe responded: "The question was answered by the IAAF President yesterday and also by the President of the IOC. We will await the full interpretation through the International Olympic Committee before making any judgements."

Sebastian Coe speaking at the Luzhniki Stadium


Coe is looking forward to "very, very good championships" – but he said athletes faced a huge challenge in post-Olympic years. "I tend to think that athletes that have emerged from a big Olympic year tend to be quite injury-prone. We've lost a few people along the way this year.

"That wasn't surprising. When I came out of my 1984 Olympic year my father, who was my coach, described the following year as like training an eggshell. Because an Olympic year is hard, physically and mentally, you do more things and you do them with a greater intensity.

"So the year after an Olympic year is a big challenge for athletes. But we have fantastic names here and we will have some fantastic head-to-heads. And the home team is strong. And of course we have some medal hopes from Great Britain. So these will be a strong, strong Championships."

Recalling his disappointment, and subsequent triumph in Moscow 33 years ago, Coe added: "Yes, it seems like a different era and it was a big moment. What happened in this stadium I guess in large part defined what I did in my athletics career and also in a large part what I went on to do as well, because the Olympic Games, the Olympic Movement has been my life.

"It was a fantastic Games in Moscow, more world records than any previous Games, and the organisation was terrific. We didn't really know what to expect as it was a very difficult period at the time. It was a very difficult time for any British athlete.

"But it was the right thing to be at the Games, it was the right environment, and for me it was a big, big moment in my life."

That arena which shaped the 23-year-old Coe's life can now have a similar effect upon a new generation of athletes. It is an amphitheatre of a stadium, and the acoustics are marvellous, but alas the decibel level has remained generally low on the opening weekend with crowds of no more than a few thousand turning up, particularly in the morning sessions.

With tickets going at prices of around £3 ($4.65/€3.49), the organisers can hardly be accused of pricing the public out. The decision was taken long ago to reduce the capacity of 80,000 to a working capacity of 50,000 - but that capacity has not been tested thus far.

Speaking the day after his political rival, in the same press room within the stadium, IAAF vice-president and IOC member Sergey Bubka, who has invested so much political and personal stock in these championships, admitted he had been "a little disappointed" at the sparseness of the crowd on the opening day and second morning session.

He maintained, however, that part of the reason may have been the intensely sunny conditions in Moscow. "When that happens, I know people in Moscow always go to their dachas," he said. "Maybe there were some people with tickets who didn't attend."

Sergey Bubka addressing difficult issues at the Luzhniki Stadium

It was certainly one of the more unusual reasons brought forward to explain poor attendance at a sporting event.

"I hope we will do our best to settle this issue," he added. "I know when I was competing, if the stadium was empty I was really disappointed. When the crowd get behind you they help you to perform."

What, one wonders, might Mr Coe have been thinking, one year on from the glorious triumph of the London 2012 Games, two weeks on from the London Anniversary Games which packed the stadium at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park once again, when he observed the empty red, orange and yellow seats in the Luzhniki cavern?

Of course, Coe would not have wished for anything other than packed stands for the sport he loves. But did he manage to exclude the merest trace of schadenfreude?

Inevitably, Bubka was questioned upon the issue which has brought athletics such unwanted publicity in recent weeks - doping, a topic unhappily revived by the breaking news that Trinidad and Tobago's 100 and 200m runner Kelly-Ann Baptiste, ranked third in this year's listings, had become the latest high profile sprinter to have failed a doping test.

The question from the floor was addressed both to him and the athlete sitting at his side, the United States' Olympic 200m champion and multiple world champion Allyson Felix, but as she demurred Bubka leaned across with a smile and told her "I'm ready".

The response was, to use an image from another popular sport, a straight bat.

"When Jacques Rogge became IOC President he said that the biggest threat to sport in the 21st century was doping," Bubka recalled. "It was the IOC which began doping controls in the 1960s. As we can see in our society, some people respect and follow the rules, and others violate them. Of course it is really unfortunate that we have some doping positives. It disappoints me. On the other side of that, this shows the system we have got is more efficient, and much stronger as we try to catch the cheaters.

"The IAAF is one of the leading organisations in the fight against doping. It has invested the most money of any sporting organisation in this. We now have the Biological Passport, and the Congress just passed approved the return of doping suspension to four years.

"Today in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency we can go back to the last eight years for any athlete. I believe in November it will be decided it is more, around 10 years. With this we will continue the fight against doping more effectively. But society is like this."

Felix, sitting alongside him, felt emboldened to make her own contribution to the debate. "This is nothing new for our sport. It is disappointing, but all you can do as an athlete is to bring a bright light with your performances to every kid that's out there, and that's what I am trying to do."

Essentially this is what it all comes down to. These massive, sponsored enterprises are given meaning by those who participate, and if they can shine brightly enough to warm those who watch them, the enterprise makes sense.

Coe was such an athlete in his prime; as was Bubka, whose pole vault world record still stands. Asked to speak about the forthcoming 10,000m race in which his fellow countryman Mo Farah was widely expected to triumph, Coe reflected: "He is in that mode in his career where he doesn't think he's going to lose, and probably his competitors don't think they are going to win either. It's only a small period in an athlete's career but it's very difficult to see how anybody is going to successfully get by him. He will be pushed all the way, but I think he's just got too many skill-sets at the moment."

Mo Farah secures the world 10,000m title in Moscow

As he spoke of that small window of wonderful opportunity, you sensed Coe had his own time of glory in mind, and that the thoughts he ascribed to Farah were his own.

Day two of these championships concluded with another emblematic appearance by the man who is now the sport's shining light, Usain Bolt.

"This is a special person, a great athlete," said Bubka when asked to evaluate the Jamaican sprinter's place in the general scheme of track and field. "But what he also brings to the sport is the ability to establish excellent relations with the crowd. And they like that. When you have people like this you can really highlight and promote sports and bring young people into sport. So it's great to have such a person."

Usain Bolt sports the shirt shortly before regaining his world 100m title in Moscow

Sure enough, having sent a big, deep roar of approval through the Luzhniki - which looked as if it had around 50,000 in for the evening session, Bolt delivered another victory in his semi-final. And he was the pied-piper once again as he made his way out of the stadium and into the waiting minibus to take him and the other finalists back to the warm-up track. A crowd of youngsters, running down the steps to the concourse and bumping into each other in their excitement, competed to take pictures and ask for autographs.

When he returned, the sunshine had been replaced by a storm, the blue track pooling ahead of him under heavy rain. As the camera lingered on him, displaying his image on the big screens around the arena, insouciantly, he mimed opening and sheltering under an umbrella, casting glances either side of the imaginary canopy to the lowering sky above. Then he delivered gold yet again.

The third member of the press conference featuring Bubka and Felix, the recently-retired Czech former world decathlon record holder Roman Šebrle, played a relatively minor role, but when asked to comment upon the Bolt effect on athletics, he came up with a line which offered essential truth: "Thank God for Usain Bolt in our sport."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.