"I'm very very happy. I feel very good," she said. "In the race I feel strong, and I had a good feeling to win. In the last lap, I knew I could win."

A world junior champion at 5000m in 2010, the younger Dibaba looked to be a very good prospect (if not quite a future champion) at that distance before switching to 1500 with immediate, devastating impact. Before Shanghai, her personal best 1500 was 4:05.90 in Rieti last year, but the bold manner of her victory at the World indoor championships two months ago in Istanbul suggested much, much better.

Hagos wins men’s 5000 m

As the runners in the 5000m at the Shanghai Samsung Diamond League splashed their way around the track, Hagos Gebrehiwot looked increasingly at home.

Running his first senior 5000m on the track he may have been, running in illustrious company he certainly was, but Gebrehiwot looked like a man who belonged.

Lap by lap he became more prominent in the pack. Lagging at the start, buried mid-field at half-way, Gebrehiwot moved into the leading bunch until, at the bell, there he was contesting the lead with Thomas Longosiwa of Kenya.

An Olympic and World championships finalist, Longosiwa is no mug. Nor does he lack finishing speed, but it was Gebrehiwot who had the bigger motor, powering away up the final straight to win by a few metres in a world-leading 13:11.00.

The time may have been more impressive had the conditions been more favourable. The 5000m was run in pretty much the worst of the conditions of a very ordinary night. But the scalps – Longosiwa, Kenenisa Bekele in fifth place, 'Gus’ Choge seventh – carry a very high value.

Fifth in the 3000m at last year’s World Youth Championships in Lille, Gebrhiwot has quickly out-stripped the four youngsters who finished ahead of him. Talking to him in the dinner room after the meeting, he said he would like to run the World Junior Championships in Barcelona. He may have to lift those sights to Olympian heights.

Ethiopia is likely to select its London representatives on the basis of fastest times, which may discount the value of Gebrhiwot’s win in Shanghai. But he will have other chances to run well. His next race may be in Oslo, which should provide an opportunity to run fast.

According to his biography, Gebrehiwot is just a week or so past his 18th birthday. He could pass for older, it’s true, but as I chatted to him with the help of his female teammates Birtukan Adamu, Birtukan Fente and Almaz Ayana, he reacted and spoke like a teenager.

The story that appeared to emerge was of a youngster who comes from the Tigray region of Ethiopia but now lives and trains in Addis Ababa. The fourth of six children in a farming family, he did not take up running until two years ago.

Gebrehiwot reportedly ran a 14:10h for 5000m in Addis last year, but since his trip to Lille, he has made rapid progress, touching base on several of running’s hallowed grounds.

Last December, he won Madrid’s San Silvestre Vallecana 10km road in 27:57. His teammate on that trip, and winner of the women’s race, was none other than Tirunesh Dibaba. In February, Gebrhiwot ran 7:44.08 for 3000m indoors in Boston, shaving a second off his time from the World Youths.

Finally, in April, the young Ethiopian upstaged another field of more experienced runners in wining the Carlsbad 5k road race in California in 13:14. Not many performances in the c.v, then, but all of them on well-known running stages.

A new generation of Ethiopian youngsters is emerging to challenge at the middle-distances where Kenya has normally held the edge.