But I tell you who just might be: step forward Paweł Fajdek, Shawnacy Barber, Jianan Wang, Xinglong Gao, Jinzhe Li, OK - Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shamier Little, Yarisley Silva, Hyvina Kiyeng Jepkemoi…and the remarkable Ezekiel Kemboi.

I expected to be gripped by this week’s Athletics World Championships, like I was gripped by, say, the 1998 Tour de France.

I felt professionally obliged to witness a number of must-see moments, beginning with the inevitable Bolt-Justin Gatlin showdown, that we could all see coming a mile off.

What has been wholly, exhilaratingly unexpected, however, is the regularity with which I have found myself enchanted, charmed, captivated by the images being beamed out of Beijing’s still magnificent Bird’s Nest Stadium.

Fajdek started it on Sunday morning (my time).

How is it possible not to warm to a man propelling a hammer with great skill and power more than two metres beyond his closest rival, his glasses held in place by a length of knicker elastic?

Next day, same warm feeling triggered by Barber handing Renaud Lavillenie et al a beating in the men's pole-vault, decked out not in some slick lycra body-suit, but old-fashioned vest and shorts, exposing unfeasible acres of back and torso whenever he took flight over the bar.

And so it went on.

I love dear outspoken, slightly eccentric, criminally underrated Greg Rutherford, the British long jumper.

But even he was sadly outclassed in the endearment stakes (though not the pit, where it really mattered) by his trio of young Chinese competitors, who seemed as engagingly loopy as a box of frogs.

I was particularly taken by the stick-thin Gao, whose technique required him to look straight up in the air at the apogee of his leap, like some long-jumping version of Fernando Valenzuela, the legendary baseball pitcher.

Silva: her thick, white hair-band became dislodged during what turned out to be the winning vault and lay forgotten on the cushion until after Brazilian silver medallist Fabiana Murer had tried unsuccessfully to match her exploit.

Jepkemoi: winning a highly competitive women’s steeplechase, in spite of a hurdling technique that frequently involved landing sideways.

Little: I must admit it was the glasses again, along with the day-glo yellow ribbon; these left me half in mind of Poly Styrene, the late punk rocker, and half of Malcolm X.

Even Fraser-Pryce, a contemporary (and compatriot) of Bolt, got in on the act, sporting green braids and a yellow flower halo that made it look like she was sprinting - sublimely - in a particularly elaborate shower-cap.

Those who know me might suspect me of being facetious, but I am perfectly serious: the sort of quirky authenticity evidenced by each of the athletes I have singled out is exactly what the sport needs right now.

It takes one’s mind away from the cynicism of doping - even though the Championships have not been free of positive tests – and leaves a vivid and immensely appealing impression that here are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

I just hope that Lord Coe, President-elect of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), doesn’t go and ruin it, though I fear he might.

Quirkiness, after all, is often, though not always, a symptom of lack of money; of all the tasks now confronting Coe, the area where I can most readily see him making a rapid difference is attracting new sponsorship, hence funding, into the sport.

In the long run, this is of course to be welcomed: quirkiness, like anything else, palls after a time.

But I hope, now the bar has been set, we can first enjoy an extended quirky interlude.

If combined, as in Beijing, with competitive contests, it could really give the sport a lift.

Entertaining as the examples I have so far mentioned have been, I would have to nominate a man’s sprint as my favourite moment of all from the championships, narrowly ahead of the spectacle of David Rudisha pounding on doggedly at the front of a bunched, top-class 800 metres field, his arms pumping like pistons.

The sprint I have in mind is nothing to do with Bolt, dramatic as his snatched 100m triumph undoubtedly was.

It was the one executed by the extraordinary Kemboi after 2,700 metres of the 3,000m steeplechase.

Carefully sizing up the next hurdle, he then took off like a particle fired around the Large Hadron Collider.

It was one of those sporting moments that make you blink in disbelief.

Yes, it has so far been a good World Championships for this under-the-cosh sport, a surprisingly good one, even if one of its chief legacies will be to put the rigour of anti-doping practices in Kenya more than ever under the microscope.