A moment destined to bear comparison with any in international sport this year saw Michael Johnson's superb career crowned with a world 400 metres record in Seville's Olympic Stadium last evening.

Moments after he had crossed the line at the end of an astonishing run, Johnson looked across at the trackside clock for confirmation of a career-long ambition finally realised.

It had stopped at 43.18 seconds, all it took the big Texan to traverse a distance which in spite of its popularity, yields only grudgingly to history. When Lee Evans set his stake for sporting immortality, with a time of 43.86 seconds in the rarified air of Mexico City in 1968, it lasted for 20 years until Harry "Butch" Reynolds took it at the Weltklasse in Zurich.

Now it is deservedly in the hands of a man whose dominance of the event is such that he went unbeaten at the distance for eight years until Antonio Pettigrew and three others upstaged him on a bad night for the big man in Paris in 1997 and thus ended an incredible sequence of 58 straight wins.

Incredibly the Texan, whose languid movement off the track runs in inverse proportion to his dynamism on it, came to the World Championships here with questions being asked about his fitness after an injury sustained in Sweden last month.

But a brilliant semi-final win hinted at heroics in the making. And even by Johnson's extravagant standards, we certainly got them.

While the Mexican Alejandro Cardenas in the lane inside him prayed audily for deliverance, Johnson was the epitome of composure on the blocks. But once the gun sounded he was off, a mere blur to those of us on the far side of the stadium but clearly eliminating the stagger on those running on the outside lanes.

In his last visit to the track, the champion had run flat out for 320 metres, touched the brakes and still finished in 43.95. Now it was foot to the board all the way and the effect was to reduce some of the finest athletes in the world to relative slowcoaches.

"This record has been a long time coming, so long that I often wondered how many more chances I had left to do it," he said. "Of course I wanted to win the gold medal but deep down, I probably wanted the world record even more.

"I have felt at peace with myself from the very beginning of these Games and I think that was the deciding factor. You have to take the bad with the good in any career. When you are top of the tree you have to accept criticism and now I realise that. But this was one of my best nights."

This was Johnson's fourth World 400 metres win. And taken in conjunction with his 200 metres and relay successes, it enabled him to equal Carl Lewis's record of eight gold medals.

In Atlanta three years ago, the American had celebrated a unique 200 and 400 metres Olympic double with a 200 metres record of 19.32. Now he had chosen another elaborate stage to sail into history and those of us in the stadium felt privileged to be there.

That kind of running tends to minimise the achievements of lesser mortals, but the Australian Cathy Freeman, among others, was determined to prove world records are not necessarily the only barometer of class.

Giving substance to her pledge to be positive in the equivalent women's race, Freeman attacked from the off and by the time they straightened out at the entrance to the finishing stretch she had already effectively dealt with the challenge of Falilat Ogunkoya of Nigeria. And with the experienced German Grit Breuer also beginning to thread air, nothing or nobody, it seemed, could threaten the Australian's position.

That was until Breuer's unsung team-mate Ania Rucker began a long, lonely run in the outside lane. Almost unnoticed, she powered past most of the bigger names until only Freeman separated her from the gold over the last 20 metres.

The Australian, three lanes removed, may not have even seen her but whatever the reason, she slowed perceptibly approaching the line and can only have been astounded when she looked across to see another athlete converging on her. In the event, however, the line came just in time for her, a time of 49.67 seconds giving her 17/100s of a second to spare over Rucker.

"I was vaguely aware that somebody was closing down on me to my right but I didn't know who," said Freeman. "I suspected it would be Breuer and was more than a little surprised to discover afterwards that it was in fact her German colleague."

There was plenty of courage too in an absorbing 10,000 metres final for women in which Paula Radcliffe from Liverpool, a perennial loser on the track, was attempting to deliver the win which only the most cold-hearted would have begrudged her.

But sadly Radcliffe, second in two world cross country championships, found that nothing had changed when Gete Wami of Ethiopia sprinted away from her on the last lap to win by more than two and a half seconds in a time of 30 mins 24.56 secs.

For the first time since these championships were inaugurated in 1983, Sergei Bubka's name was not flashed on the stadium screen as the winner of the pole vault. But the injured Russian can only have watched and admired as his compatriot Maksim Tarasov overcame a shaky spell to take the title ahead of Dmitriv Markov of Australia and the Icelander Aleksandr Averbuk with a clearance of 6.02 metres.