That said, Russia stands sixth, with two golds, a silver and a bronze, in a table headed by - Kenya, which has six golds, four silvers and three bronzes. What has been happening here?

Well let’s take a look at the Russian team first. On the brighter side - one of those golds was the women’s 4x400m team, who have qualified for the final here, although only fourth fastest. And while high jump winner Svetlana Shkolina was not here to defend her title, the joint world indoor champion Kuchina and Olympic champion Anna Chicherova covered that one with gold and bronze. Plus there was the unexpected breakthrough of Shubenkov,the European champion, who took gold in a national record of 12.98sec.

On the debit side - for the great Yelena Isinbayeva, Moscow’s gold was a final flourish. Nor was Tatyana Lysenko here to defend her hammer throw title. Aleksandr Menkov did show up to defend his long jump title but was nowhere near in form.

And the elephant in the room - or maybe that should be the elephant absent from the room - there are no Russian walkers here, following the doping scandal that has engulfed the head walks coach Viktor Chegin and his stable of hugely successful athletes- 17 of whom have thus far failed doping tests.

In Moscow, despite rumblings of that crisis which, for instance, resulted in the mysterious non-appearance of Olympic 50 kilometres race walk champion Sergey Kirdyapkin - who has subsequently received a three-year retrospective ban for doping from the Russian Anti-Doping Agency.

But his wife Anisya Kirdyapkina took silver in the 20km race walk behind home winner Elena Lashmanova, and in the men’s walks there was gold for Aleksandr Ivanov in the 20km and silver for Mikhail Ryshov in the 50km.

Without doubt the decision of the Russian Federation not to bring walkers here while investigations are ongoing into exactly how Chegin has been able to operate down the years has cost medals.

Some experienced observers of the Russian scene feel a mistake has been made in not selecting walkers for these Worlds who are unattached to the Chegin central operation in Saransk.

But that would be to ignore the suspicion which has grown up around the Russian system in the light of allegations now being investigated by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Such suspicions were clearly voiced by Slovakia’s winner of today’s men’s 50km race walk, Matej Toth.

“I’m so sorry that I have to say something like that but I’m sure that today our competition was much cleaner than with Russian walkers' participation," he said.

“It was not just an accident. They have too many doping rules violations as mostly all Chegin’s group tested positive for doping. I’m sure that Russian walkers could be very good in future even without doping. They are really strong and I wish they realised that we can have great performances and strong result competing clean.”

As if to corroborate Toth’s unhappy cynicism, news emerged that a non-Chegin athlete, the only Russian walker on the 50km startlist, had tested positive.

The athlete’s coach, Konstantin Golubtsov, told TASS news agency: “I learnt only yesterday evening that my athlete was tested positive for erythropoietin and I’m completely shocked.”

As WADA pick grimly over the evidence of systematised doping, and allegations of financial corruption levelled at the All-Russian Athletics Federation, the firm and unyielding hand of Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has persuaded head athletics coach Valentin Maslakov and longstanding President Valentin Balakhnichev, who also lost his position as IAAF treasurer here last week after the support of his home Federation was withdrawn.

Yuriy Borzakovsky, the Olympic 2004 800m champion, was appointed head coach in March and announced : “We now have a new team and everyone in it is clean.”

Earlier that month, Russia had competed with great success at the European Indoor Championships  in Prague, topping the medals table with six golds.

But the inference that all that success was founded on doping would be unfair. While Borzakovsky looks like the new and comforting face of Russian athletics, some in the sport question the depth of his coaching knowledge and point to the relatively poor preparations most of the Beijing team had just outside Moscow, contrasting it with the well-organised training camps set up in suitable climatic conditions by the old, departed order.

“Beijing’s Worlds’ isn’t so successful for the Russian team,” said Chicherova here tonight. “We had only two medals until now and I felt a little pressure because everyone in our team waited for women’s high jump with big hopes and medal expectations. We coped with the pressure and what is the most important thing is that the women’s world high jump title will stay with Russia for at least two more years.”

The night before, Shubenkov commented:  “So far I tried to not pay that much attention to these scandals in the Russian Federation. I was sure and my coach was sure that I had to come to Beijing, because we have a goal to achieve. We were working for that, so at some point I didn’t care actually for anybody else. I tried to focus on my goals and tried to stay aside from this.”

Russia is surely doing the right thing in clearing the decks - but a lot of serious athletics expertise looks as if it has gpne overboard with it.

As for Kenya - the doping allegations have pointed a firm finger in their direction too, but again, WADA are preparing their judgements on that.

In the meantime, what has happened here in Beijing is that, while distance running continues to provide a level of success for Kenya, who have hopes pinned on Asbel Kiprop in the last day’s 1500m, new areas of success have flourished here, most notably in the javelin, where Julius Yego won with an effort of 92.72 metres, putting him third on the all-time world list, and Nairobi policeman Nicholas Bett won the 400m hurdles from the outside lane in a national record of 47.79.

Understanding how these two talents operate is to understand the increasingly fragmented nature of sports coaching in an age where fragementation - bonded by social media - is a constant.

Yego, 26, announced here proudly this week: “YouTube Athlete is my nickname now,”  adding that one of the people who “made it happen” for him was Finland’s 2007 world champion Tero Pitkamaki, who was sitting alongside at the post-event press conference  as bronze medallist.

“He is among the icons I was always watching to know what kind of training they are really doing,” Yego said. “So YouTube Athlete is my name but maybe is my brand as well.

“I always believed that Kenya has tremendous talents and we proved that yesterday with Bett winning the 400 metres hurdles and today with my victory. And I’m sure as we continue we will see many Kenyans coming up to the field and to sprints. We have talents there and if we can identify them on early stages I’m sure Kenya will always be on top in the World Championships and Olympics.”

Bett commented in the wake of his victory: “I wasn’t expecting to be a gold medallist.”

Yukka Harkonen, the Finn who works as an agent for Kenya’s javelin thrower Julius Yego and also as an advisor to the team, commented: “It was a dream for us to get to the semi-finals here in Beijing. So the results here, first with two Kenyans in the final and then with Nicholas as a winner is like, please, don’t wake us up, let us still dream”.

Bett, who lives and trains in Nairobi, where he is enrolled in a police college, is a father of three children, including six-month-old twins.

The story of his Beijing victory effectively started at last year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. He didn’t make it to the final but was nevertheless spotted by Hennie Koetze, a South African coach who attended the event with a couple of hurdlers from his country, including eventual gold medallist Cornel Fredericks.

Koetze serves also as a coach of the Saudi Arabia national team in hurdles. But busy as he was he decided to welcome the promising talent from Kenya into his group and started to coach him by internet.

“How we work with my coach and manage my training is by exchanging text messages on my phone every other day for my training plans and the longer ones he sends me on emails with links of YouTube videos to watch and review weekly”, Bett explained.

Both Kenyan finalists in the 400m hurdles significantly improved their performance in Beijing. Bett entered the Championships with a personal best of 48.29 while Boniface Mucheru Tumuti, fifth in the final, clocked 48.29 in semis, 0.63 better that his PB before Beijing. Before they started working with Koetze neither had managed to go below 49 seconds.

“It’s an absolutely unbelievable story. But I guarantee we’ll have even better results in the future,” Harkonen said. “There will be three Kenyans in Rio de Janeiro.” And the third man here is expected to be Bett’s brother, Haron Koech.

The announcement that two female Kenyan athletes failed doping tests here this week, of course, detracts a little from Harkonen’s tone of dazzling optimism. But nothwithstanding what WADA might have to say late or soon, it seems there are some significant sporting an cultural shifts in operation here.