The spectacle is becoming a familiar prequel to the main Diamond League programme on the following day at the Letzigrund Stadium.

How many of the thousands who watched had deliberately turned up to do so and how many were simply lingering before catching later trains than normal was impossible to determine. But what is clear, to those who run the annual Weltklasse meeting here, and to anyone present, is that the spectacle is not just regular, but popular.

They roared; they sighed; they stayed, in the main, to watch the podium finishers - including Australia’s Kurtis Marschall, who set successive indoor personal bests of 5.81 metres  and 5.86m, and fellow 21-year-old Timor Morgunov, an Authorised Neutral Athlete who won the event with a do-or-die final clearance of 5.91m, also an indoor personal best - being honoured in what was essentially an exhibition event.

For International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) President Sebastian Coe, making the presentations in one of his favoured world-record hunting cities of old, this was another agreeable example of track and field walking the walk, rather than talking the talk.

In world champion Sam Kendricks, who in his other life is a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve, that walking has an estimable footsoldier. As he so often does at these events, Kendricks went the extra miles, chatting to fans, posing for selfies and autographing t-shirts.

Earlier, Andreas Hediger and Christophe Joho, joint organisers of an event that will today host the first of two IAAF Diamond League finals in the space of 24 hours – Brussels does the other half tomorrow evening – had spoken of the changing approach that has been adopted in order to connect with people and ensure the long-term future of the meeting and, essentially, the sport.

For Joho, who was brought up in Zurich, the Weltklasse experience has formed a kind of template of what a sporting experience should feel like.

Asked by Colin Jackson - our MC for the day at a pre-event press conference in the Letzigrund - to recall his first memory of the meeting that has been known for  years as the “four hour Olympics”, Joho responded: “Easy.

“When I look over at these stands now, I can remember I was 12 years old in 1978. And I watched the men’s 5,000 metres - Henry Rono set a world record, and there was also a Swiss athlete, Markus Ryffel, in there. It was a fantastic race. Marcus had a Swiss record. I had a poster of these two next to my bed for years - I still have it now. 

"If I had the opportunity I would go back to the stands. All evening long the noise is so great that when you leave the stadium you can hardly hear any more.”

To be honest, since the stadium was rebuilt in 2007 - partly in order to accommodate three football matches during the European Championships shared by Switzerland and Austria the following year - it has lost some of its most ear-buzzing acoustics, which were amplified by the Letzigrund equivalent of the Kop End hammering on the metal advertising boards near the start/finish line.

But as subsequent meetings, and indeed the 2014 European Athletics Championships, demonstrated, the din can still be serious.

The meeting will be a sell-out, which means 25,000 people - the same as the old capacity, with 3,000 standing - will be there. "The real hardcore fans," as Joho describes them. 

Thankfully, in this sport, such a description doesn’t carry any of the undertones that would be involved were it used to describe football followers.

Joho added: “Each year we have more families coming to the Letzigrund Stadium for this meet. We started with one block. Now we have five.  

"We will have 4,000 families in the stadium and we could have sold more. For me this is the right direction a meeting should go. Sometimes you have the criticisms - ‘do we have a future?' - but there is a strong demand for this product.”

In parallel to this policy there has been a serious re-focusing upon putting together a database for regular athletics fans. “A couple of years ago,” Joho recalled, “at the end of a long working day, we would post in the evening on Facebook and pray, hoping the numbers will go up.

"Then we looked around and realised we have no clue about it. So we tried last season to do something about this. We made a massive shift to online, but we had to do it systematically. We changed the strategy, we hooked up with the people at Red Bull, guys who know how social media works. Our goal is to become a Weltklasse in the world of online.

"We try now to have a system database - email addresses - which is really valuable. This is how we are in touch with families. We fill 80 per cent of the stadium each year with athletics fans.

"They are the core. They are loyal. If Usain Bolt is here or not, if there is a world record or not, they will come.”

So as once with a stadium, now with a database - if you build it, they will come...