Jake Wightman’s golden glory puts him in the middle of British revival

If you’re not a fan of misty eyed sporting nostalgia, then look away now. This is going to get nauseous.

The date is August 11, 1984, the venue the Los Angeles Coliseum, the occasion the men’s 1500metres Olympic final.

Sebastian Coe versus Steve Ovett, one of British sports greatest ever rivalries, the former returning from illness to retain his title, and in doing so shoving it up the scribes who claimed he shouldn’t have been selected in the first place.

Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. I was seven years old and heavily into Top Deck. Still, even as I slammed those lager and limeades, my young mind was captivated by their clashes.

They would race again but this was their last colossal head to head, and while Ovett, dogged by illness, didn’t make it to the finish line, it was young Steve Cram who took silver.

A year earlier in Helsinki, Crammy claimed the first ever full athletics world championship title over 1500m.

British men’s middle distance running ruled the world, with Peter Elliot’s 1500m Olympic silver in 1988 marking the end of an amazing era.

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Since that, it has been the British women who have done most of the middle-distance damage. Kelly Holmes, most notably, won both 800m and 1500m Olympic golds in Athens 2004, battling bravely in the former, floating beautifully in the latter.

However, since a 22-year-old Cram scooped that 1983 world crown, no British man has picked up a world championship 1500m medal. Until this week.

Fittingly, it was Cram calling the race for the BBC, but even at the bell nobody was thinking 28-year-old Jake Wightman was about to shake up the world.

The best of the best were