TOKYO, 09 AUGUST 2021 (IOS) --- The 10 days of competition featured “a stunning demonstration of fantastic athletics”, Ridgeon said, despite the challenges of training and competing during a pandemic.

“Our view is that this has probably been the most high-performing Olympics ever for athletics,” he said. 

“If you look at the whole picture, of course we didn’t have the amazing crowds we had in London (2012), for example, but on pure athletics performances this has been the best ever.

“It has been a great mix of established stars, emerging stars, great completion, brilliant performances, world records and human interest stories. It has been a really lovely mix.”

Ridgeon rattled through the figures at a press conference in the Main Press Centre on Sunday, highlighting three world records - set by triple jumper Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela and 400m hurdlers Karsten Warholm of Norway and Sydney McLaughlin of the U.S - plus 12 Olympic Games records, 28 area records and 151 national records set at the Tokyo Olympics. 

He said 55% of these records were set in women’s disciplines”.

“In addition, 82 teams reached the final, an Olympic athletics record," he said. "Forty-three teams won medals, bettered only in Sydney 2000 and Atlanta 1996, and 23 teams won gold.”

But was no surprise that USA topped the table with seven gold medals, plus another 12 silver and seven bronze, but Italy’s rise to second with five gold medals was one of the talking points of Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.

Among the stars for Italy was the unheralded men’s 100m champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs who picked up a second gold in a dramatic 4x100m relay, and Gianmarco Tamberi, whose journey from injury despair to sharing Olympic Games gold in men's high jump with close friend Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar was the sport’s most “magical moment”, according to Ridgeon.

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“And it happened on one of those nights of athletics that will live long in the memory,” he said.

Two names stood out among the many multi-medallists: Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica, who retained the women’s sprint double and added sprint relay gold, and new comer Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, whose bid for an unprecedented treble delivered double distance titles in the 5000m and 10,000m, with bronze in the 1500m.

Tokyo 2020 also provided a showcase for some of the sport’s youngest and newest stars, not least McLaughlin, 22, and her 19-year-old teammate Athing Mu, who dominated the women’s 800m, and Norwegian boy-wonder Jakob Ingebbrigsten, 20, who added his name to the list of Olympic Games 1500m champions.

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe picked out for special mention veteran Allyson Felix of the U.S, who leaves Tokyo 2020 as the most decorated female athletics Olympian of all time. She bade farewell on Saturday, the final night of competition at the Olympic Stadium, with a seventh gold medal, her 11th in total from five Olympic Games.

“We are just lucky she is from our sport,” Coe said. “She is magnificent. That she has done it over five Olympic Games is, frankly, off the planet.”