There were nearly two world records on the day, as Mondo Duplantis of Sweden cleared his second best outdoor mark of 6.10 metres and had an ultimately unsuccessful tilt at 6.19, which would have bettered his own mark by a centimetre.

Hassan, who won the 10,000 and 1500m titles at the Doha 2019 World Championships, lived up to all the expectations in this World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting, gritting her teeth periodically as she drove herself round the final lap, urgently encouraged at one point by meeting organiser Jos Hermens.

"Wow!,” she said after her landmark performance at the annual Fanny Blankers Koen Games, "to run this world record here today in Hengelo is something I could only dream of.

"It's the perfect confirmation of the hard work we've put in getting ready for Tokyo.

"I am so happy to share this record in front of my Dutch fans."

But if Hassan’s early effort was the performance of the meeting it was closely rivalled at the other end of the afternoon by the latest prodigious effort from Sweden’s 21-year-old world pole vault record holder Duplantis.

He had space to spare as he soared over the bar at 6.10 metres, just five centimetres shy of the best outdoor mark of all time he recorded in Rome last September, and only 8cm off his outright world record, set indoors at Glasgow in February last year.

It was an ideal way to get back into winning ways following his first defeat in 24 meetings in the wind and rain of last month’s opening Wanda Diamond League meeting in Gateshead, where he narrowly failed to clear what would have been a winning bar of 5.80m, giving victory to double world champion Sam Kendricks of the United States.

Clearly feeling good, Duplantis had an unavailing crack at a world record of 6.19m.

Perhaps that will come when he competes at the next Diamond League meeting in Florence scheduled for Thursday (June 10).

These two landmark efforts arrived on a day when the sport was already taking in the 10.63sec 100 metres clocking in Kingston by Jamaica’s world and Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, putting her second on the all-time list behind the late United States sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner, whose record of 10.49 has stood since 1988. 

Britain’s world 200m champion Dina Asher-Smith, who also took silver in the world 100m final in Doha two years ago behind Fraser-Pryce, established her own season’s best as she won in 10.92.

Her previous best was the 11.35 she recorded in the rain and wind of Gateshead, racing into a headwind of more than three metres-per-second, to beat a field including Fraser-Pryce and the woman who previously topped the world list for the season with 10.72, Sha’Carri Richardson of the United States.

Jamaica’s Rio 2016 110 metres hurdles champion Omar McLeod won in 13.08, just 0.01 off the leading outdoor mark of the season set by world champion Grant Holloway of the United States.

The women’s 800m went, narrowly, to Britain’s Jemma Reekie in 2:00.77 ahead of her sometime training partner, European 1500m champion Laura Muir, who clocked 2:00.95.

After her mighty deeds on the boards this season, Femke Bol of The Netherlands, who won individual and relay gold over 400 metres at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Torun, opened her outdoor season in her main event of the 400m hurdles with an easy win in 54.33.

Jake Wightman, Britain’s captain at the recent European Team Championships in Silesia, won the 1500m in canny fashion in 3:34.67.