It was a bad night for the hurdles all round, with one of the international stars due in London, Dayron Robles, deciding that he could not be bothered to get a visa. The biggest draw of all, though, had a comfortable trip and sounded out a warning to his rivals. “The way I am running at the moment I feel I am in the best shape I have ever been in,” Asafa Powell said, after winning the 100 metres in 9.94sec.

By the vertiginous standards set by Powell and Usain Bolt, the man who has wrestled the world record from his Jamaican compatriot, the time was nothing special. But Powell is beginning to exude a confidence that he has sometimes seemed to lack. With Michael Frater running 10 seconds dead, Nesta Carter making the final and Bolt due to run the 200 metres tonight, the British will have to pull out something magical to retain their 4 x 100 metres Olympic title.

Powell, who edged Marc Burns, of Trinidad & Tobago, said that he has learnt a life lesson from last year’s World Championships in Osaka, Japan, when he admitted to feeling blind panic in the final and was third.

“I was trying too hard to run a world record in Osaka,” he said. “When I get to 50 metres that’s when I really try to relax. Once I’ve run faster than 9.88 [his season's best] I will feel happier.” Bolt has yet to declare his hand but it takes a hallucinogenic imagination to think he will not line up in the 100 metres in Beijing. “There are a lot of people running fast at the moment and I don’t see any one competitor as being my main rival,” Powell insisted.

If Powell met expectations, Allyson Felix was the disappointment of the night, finishing only fourth in a 200 metres won by Sherone Simpson, of Jamaica. Felix had hoped to be a multi-tasking star of the Olympics, but myopic scheduling ruled out the 400 metres and she failed to qualify for the 100 metres. That leaves the 200 metres, but she will need to improve on her time of 23 sec.

In the absence of Robles, David Oliver, the American, won the 110 metres hurdles in 13.20. Yelena Isinbayeva narrowly failed to get her 23rd world record in the pole vault, the Russian rattling the bar on her final attempt at 5.04 metres. She won with 4.93 and said she was disappointed not to break her own mark set earlier this month.