Humour is often the most effective way to convey a serious point and so it proved after Noah Lyles became the first man since Usain Bolt to not just win the sprint double at a World Athletics Championships but also a hat-trick of 200m titles.

“The thing that hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have ‘world champion’ on their heads,” Lyles said. “World champion of what!? I love the US, at times, but that ain’t the world! We are the world! We have almost every country out here fighting, thriving, putting on a flag to show that they are the representative.”

It was a fair point and, while the athletics audience certainly lapped it up, the wider question of course is to what extent anyone else will sit up and take note.

“I’m ready to transcend the sport - I want to move past just being track famous,” Lyles went on. And what of the Netflix documentary that is currently being filmed in Budapest about the world’s best sprinters? “It went from a docu series about the fastest people to a docu series about me,” he declared with a glint in his eye. “I believed in myself so much someone might think I’m crazy … and put me in an insane asylum ... but I’m a firm believer in speaking things into existence.”

Lyles is likely to be the star of the six-parter that will be broadcast ahead of next year’s Olympic although Sha’Carri Richardson and Shericka Jackson, winners here of the women’s 100m and 200m, are clearly also reaching new audiences. Jackson was within 0.07sec of Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world 200m record on Friday night while Lyles has been very public about his belief that he can surpass Bolt’s record over the longer sprint.

Aged 26, Lyles should be around for a good number of years yet and similar dominance at next year’s Paris Olympics will propel him towards the international stardom that he so obviously craves.

While it has never been easier for the talentless to become famous, the genuinely gifted like Lyles do have to rise above a vastly more cluttered field than those like Carl Lewis and Bolt who went before. Beneath all the bravado, there is also a genuinely moving story of overcoming adversity.

Brought up by his mum Keisha, Lyles lived in a household in Virginia that would periodically have its electricity cut off. He was often also sick as a young boy with asthma. A main childhood memory is of being rushed to hospital at night due to difficulties breathing. Lyles was also diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia in his school years but, as well as drawing, he would discover an outlet in gymnastics and then track and field.

Keisha has been in Budapest this week supporting her son and, despite all the outward cockiness and machismo - which has included telling Britain’s Zharnel Hughes that they both knew that he was faster - Lyles’s vulnerabilities have often also been laid bare.

When Hughes became choked up during the press conference for the 100m medallists and dedicated the achievement to his mother, Lyles suddenly turned serious in talking about the journeys they had all been on.

“I lived my whole life fighting,” he said. “All my early years I was just fighting to get out of hospital. After that it was just fighting to get out of school with dyslexia and ADHD.

“I don’t have a problem with saying what my dreams are. I don’t care if you guys believe I can do it or not. I don’t even care if I don’t do it, but I’m definitely going to say what I believe.”

Hughes: Lyles is like a brother

Lyles was then himself tearful on the podium and actually turned to Hughes for comfort. “I understand the emotions - he has been trying to get here for a long time,” said Hughes. “It’s OK. You work hard for it. Show your emotions man. He’s like a brother in a sense but, at the end of the day, we are still competitors and I’m looking forward to going through the battles.”

One of the most vocal voices in recent years about athletics’ fight for ongoing relevance has been the BBC pundit Michael Johnson - he of the golden shoes - and, in Lyles as well as Richardson, is convinced now that the raw ingredients are there.

“There can be no more complaints or excuses that track ‘needs more personalities’,” said Johnson. “Two of the most dynamic individuals in the sport are now the world’s fastest.”

It is true ,and there have been a myriad of equally fascinating sub-plots across other events. Not least the 1,500m where Josh Kerr toppled Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who will himself now face the challenge in Sunday’s 5,000m of staving off a Norwegian team-mate in Narve Gilje Nordas who is being trained by his dad.

Relations are apparently now so frosty that Gjert Ingebrigtsen, who had previously mentored three of his sons to become European 1,500m champions, has not been accredited by the Norwegian federation and is currently staying in a different hotel in Budapest.

Further Netflix series surely await for a sport that, over the past nine days, has felt like it is rising again.