Suddenly, to my utter amazement, out pootles Monsieur Hulot on an underpowered mobylette and starts circumnavigating the boards.

“What is this, the half-time entertainment?” I wonder as my jaw crashes to the ground. No-one had told me about the eccentricities of the keirin.

Four years on, at Laoshan near Beijing, and I strongly suspect that Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, is experiencing a similar disconnect between his expectations and what is unfolding in front of him.

He has come here expecting to witness Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton power to victory in their respective sprint events. But first he has to sit through the impenetrable kaleidoscopic marathon that is the madison race.

“With 129 laps to go, Blair looks baffled,” reads my note taken that day.

The notebook also contains the rather unpromising jotting “Frankly no”, which, while I can no longer be altogether sure, was I think his response when I asked if he understood how the madison worked.

Relief, though, was at hand: this most unfathomable of Olympic events was dropped for the London 2012 Olympics. And that, we assumed, was that.

Now though, astonishingly, like some B movie monster from the deep, it is back, having been added to the programme for Tokyo 2020 – and I am again lost for words.

Why oh why, if given the opportunity to append an additional track cycling event, would you not reintroduce a classic, dramatic, instantly comprehensible discipline, such as the time trial, or “kilo”, rather than a race that is about as easy to follow for the regular punter as particle physics?

Of course, I have not been privy to the long, detailed, carefully thought-through political/technical discussions which no doubt preceded this resurrection – but that, in a way, is the whole point.

One of the valuable functions of the Olympics, apart from producing a nice quadrennial cheque for participating federations, is that it gives sports the opportunity of exposure to a global audience, many of whom will not have watched, let us say, skeet shooting or Greco-Roman wrestling, or indeed track cycling, before.

If these people cannot quickly grasp what is going on, your sport will lose any chance of capturing them once the immediate patriotic imperative which probably prompted them to take a look in the first place has passed.

Last week’s announcement of new events for Tokyo 2020 also underlined a third immutable rule of life: no less inevitable than death or taxes is the certainty that sports mega-events will, over time, get bigger (if not necessarily more “mega”).

Less than six months after FIFA set course for a 48-team World Cup, starting in 2026, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has paved the way for what I think the distinguished French journalist Alain Lunzenfichter has worked out will be a 339-event Olympics.

There was a gap of 72 years between the first 100-plus-event Games (London 1908) and the total exceeding the 200 mark at Moscow 1980.

A further 20 years was enough to take the tally to 300 events exactly at Sydney 2000. Now that the logjam of recent times has been broken, one wonders how long before we hit 400.

There are differences here. Part of the worry about a 48-team World Cup is a possible surfeit of mediocrity.

The Olympic revamp may actually raise standards very slightly because the number of entrants in many events looks set to be reduced.

I can also to a degree follow the logic of the argument which holds that if you add a few more, say, swimming events (not that I think yet more swimming medals were needed), you are not augmenting the infrastructure bill or increasing the risk of white elephants.

There are other ways though in which I think this near 11 per cent expansion in Summer Games events points to deep-seated issues.

For one thing, it underlines how the system of favour trading on which international sports administration has traditionally been based makes it tough to take tough decisions.

It is always easier to add Olympic events, or World Cup qualification slots, than to take them away.

This is not to say that IOC bosses last week avoided doling out bad news under any circumstances – plainly they did not.

But the overall direction of travel, with few exceptions, ever since 1896, speaks for itself.

National Olympic Committees, by the by, are also, I think, more than likely to back expansion, since it improves the odds that some of them will be able to trumpet record medal hauls.

Another trend I have noticed in recent times is an increase in nationalism surrounding the Games.

A wise man, I remember, once described the modern Olympics as the most solipsistic of events: individual countries, under the direction of TV producers, experience their own Games, generally navigating through the programme in line with where their next medal prospect lies.

Approximately 11 per cent more finals, and somewhat smaller fields, probably means at least 11 per cent more mainstream TV time spent lingering on medals ceremonies, tearful interviews with national heroes and such like, rather than on sport per se.

You might dismiss my misgivings on this score as a question of personal taste without wider significance.

But it seems to me that part of the reason why Olympic success does not necessarily translate into grassroots sports participation is the degree to which TV viewers are incited to watch primarily out of nationalistic/patriotic fervour.

What many of them then enjoy is watching their nation – and by extension a part of themselves – coming out on top, regardless of whether the sport which the latest champion happens to have been practicing holds any intrinsic interest for them.

Yes, you can argue quite respectably that the three new sports to be tried out at Tokyo – skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing, as well as 3x3 basketball - may hold particular appeal for the young, and might hence produce a better than average viewer-to-grassroots-practitioner conversion rate.

But it would be preferable if their inclusion were instead of, rather than as well as, staler disciplines.

Recent Summer Games have already been quite unwieldy enough without this new expansion.