The tweet on the Citius Mag site references rumours that there is to be a race between the world 110 metres hurdles champion Greg Holloway and Rai Benjamin, who earned Olympic silver over 400m hurdles this summer - over 200 metres hurdles.

It’s a classic meet-in-the-middle enterprise. And it’s got legs.

Holloway, 24, who had to settle for Olympic silver in Tokyo behind Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment, has made a huge impact upon his sport since emerging from a stellar collegiate career to turn professional in 2019.

Last year he reduced Colin Jackson’s 1994 world 60m hurdles record of 7.30sec to 7.29, and at this summer’s United States Olympic trials he missed the 2012 world record of compatriot Aries Merritt by just one hundredth of a second as he clocked 12.81.

His flat sprinting is hardly shabby either. He has a 60m best of 6.50 from 2019 and, get this, a 400m relay split from the same year of 43.75.

And when it comes to cross-over talent - Holloway already has an impressive record. As a teenager he was a sufficiently effective wide receiver to be offered an American Football scholarship by the University of Georgia. He turned it down to pursue track and field at the University of Florida.

On the eve of his first Diamond League meeting - in Paris shortly after he had turned professional - he was asked why he had chosen athletics above American football. His reply, delivered deadpan: “Because I still want to be able to walk when I’m 30.”

Benjamin, also 24, has had a sensational year which began with his own superb performance at the US Trials, where he ran the 400m hurdles in 46.83 - just 0.05sec off the world record that had stood since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics to compatriot Kevin Young.

After his race, Benjamin commented: "I looked at it and I was like, ‘Dang, man. Point zero five.’ It hurts a little bit to know that it was right there and I couldn’t grab it. But it’s just more fuel for the fire, man. It’ll come when it comes."

By the time Benjamin got to Tokyo this summer Norway’s Karsten Warholm had finally bettered Young’s mark, having run 46.70 in Oslo.

The man from Mount Vernon, New York, just as he had foretold, broke into world record territory in the Tokyo final, clocking 46.17. But it was only enough for second place behind an inspired Warholm, who lowered his own mark to 45.94. 

Warholm is a different beast to Benjamin, having developed into the world’s greatest male 400m hurdler from a multi-events background. 

Benjamin is a speed merchant. He has run 10.03 for the 100m. He has run 19.99sec for the 200m. A phenomenal talent.

So this was an idea that was just waiting to happen. Although Tonja Buford-Bailey, who won women’s 400m hurdles bronze for the United States at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, maintains that she deserves credit for it.

In retweeting the Citius Mag offering, she notes: "Well, this was my idea in Tokyo @Flaamingoo @Kingben and @ItsGabrielleT can confirm. I’d like to get my finders fee…"

If this hybrid event does come to pass, it will provide strong echoes of a previous match-up bridging an athletics gap – the 1997 meeting over 150 metres between the then Olympic 100m champion, Canada’s Donovan Bailey, and the Olympic 200m (and 400m) champion, Michael Johnson of the United States.

Bailey - who was effectively racing for his shoe sponsor Adidas - had home advantage over his opponent, who was Nike’s man, as the venue was the Toronto SkyDome.

But it was not home advantage that won the day in front of a crowd of 25,000 that had turned up to the self-styled Challenge of Champions – it was Johnson’s failure to complete the course.

The American faltered at the halfway point because of what he later said was a problem with his left thigh - and so Bailey cruised home at his ease to claim the $1 million (£755,000/€885,000) prize on offer.

As we huddled round the newly rich runner to get a comment it became swiftly clear that, although we had not witnessed a complete competition, we were not to be short-changed when it came to a storyline.

The event was hyped to the heavens, it’s true. The following day’s Toronto Sun election day issue carried the front-page headline: "Bailey for Prime Minister".

But the antipathy between the two competitors was genuine enough and Bailey, who had bridled at Johnson's appropriating the term "world’s fastest man" for himself when that distinction traditionally lay with the Olympic 100m champion, announced afterwards with a characteristically devilish glint in his eye that he felt his opponent was "a faker and a chicken".

Offered the chance a little later in the evening to amend or retract his comments, Bailey considered for a moment before that gleam returned.

"He's called me a lot of things so, no, I don't regret saying it," he said.

"He knew he was going to get hammered after the first 30 metres. It was very obvious that if I was level with him at that point the gap was only going to get bigger and my butt was just going to get smaller and smaller as I pulled away from him.

"I've always said that this race wasn't going to prove who was the fastest man in the world. What it was going to do was to shut Michael Johnson up."

Given the different relations between these two US team-mates, any Midway Match-Up is unlikely to feature similar comments. But it will be worth the hype. And the words could be interesting too - Holloway in particular has a way with them.

Speaking after his world record near-miss at the Trials, he said: "I told everybody in my first interview: I didn’t come to this party to sit on the wall. I came to this party to dance."