Old Aristotle was on the ball when he mused back in ancient Greece: “The most beautiful sportsmen of all are the pentathletes”, an observation endorsed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who brought the sport into the modern Games “because it produces the ideal, complete athlete, testing a man’s moral qualities as well as his physical resources and skills”.

Old Aristotle was on the ball when he mused back in ancient Greece: “The most beautiful sportsmen of all are the pentathletes”, an observation endorsed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who brought the sport into the modern Games “because it produces the ideal, complete athlete, testing a man’s moral qualities as well as his physical resources and skills”.

On a noticeboard at the England headquarters in the Commonwealth Games village there was an invitation to answer jokey questions posed by other team members. One asked: “What do you say when you see an athlete on the training track?” Underneath, someone had scrawled: “Hello, stranger.”