Lamecha Girma and Faith Kipyegon set world records at Paris Diamond League

Everywhere you looked on this deliriously balmy Parisian night, world records were being attacked, toppled, torn apart.

Officially there was a 20,000-capacity crowd in the Stade Charléty. But as the fans stood and stomped and roared while Faith Kipyegon, Lamecha Girma, and Jakob Ingebrigtsen powered to two world records and another world best they sounded like three times that. All in all, it made for an astonishing hors doeuvres before next year’s Olympics.

The evening got off to a wild start when Ingebrigtsen smashed the two-mile world best – which had stood since 1997 – by four seconds. But then quickly entered the realm of the super-extraordinary as Kipyegon and Girma also smashed the women’s 5,000m and men’s 3,000m steeplechase records into smithereens.

Between all that madness, Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson also broke her own British 800m record with a display of brilliant front-running that reminded this observer of the wonder horse Frankel. Usually that would make for a decent headline. On this night, though, it became a footnote.

How to explain the quick times? Beforehand there were whispers that the track at the Stade Charlety was super fast. That clearly played a part – along with the hot weather and the wavelight technology that let the runners know they were on track.

It is also impossible to ignore how brands have been working on the latest evolutions of the super spike technology, which has changed the sport beyond recognition in recent years. That, more than anything, was surely the biggest factor - although of course track and field’s history teaches us to be cautious.

The 22-year-old Ingebrigtsen was the first, running an extraordinary 7:54.10 over two miles to break Daniel Komen’s old world best. Having