Darren Campbell finished his career here last night with a win after a week in which he has earned bigger headlines than at any other time in the 15 years he has been competing internationally.
The 32-year-old Sale runner, who won 18 medals in major championships, decided that his appearance in the Celtic Cup would mark the end of the road. With the massive BP oil refinery dominating the skyline and against a backdrop of a caber-tossing event involving competitors dressed in kilts, it made for a distinctly unglamorous and slightly surreal finale.
A cold wind blowing off the Firth of Forth made conditions difficult but Campbell, who can claim to be Britain's second most successful ever sprinter behind his coach, Linford Christie, still managed to win the 100 metres in 10.65sec, running into a head wind of 3.3 metres per second.
This time, unlike five days ago in Gothenburg after Britain's 4x100m relay team had won the gold medal at the European Championships, Campbell did a lap of honour, greeted warmly by the crowd of 4,000. A tear came to his eye.
The controversy Campbell ignited after that win in Sweden, when he said he did not feel it was appropriate to join his team-mates on a victory lap because of the presence on the team of the convicted drugs cheat Dwain Chambers, should not be allowed to overshadow a career that included winning the 1998 European 100m title and being part of the relay team that won Olympic gold in Athens in 2004.
Campbell had been due to make one final appearance in Birmingham, in a match between Britain, China, Russia and the United States, but decided before this race to call it a day, pulling out of the 4x100m team for that event.
"This is definitely my last race," he said. "This is what I'm all about, grass roots athletics and the people who come to watch, come rain or shine. It wasn't a hard decision. I probably should have retired after Athens but my agent and coach said I should carry on. Athletics is all about dreams and after winning the Olympic gold it was difficult to motivate myself.
"It wasn't a personal attack on Dwain in Gothenburg but I had to make a stand. I haven't spoken to him but I'm always here if Dwain wants to come and talk to me. Throughout my career everyone has thought everyone else takes drugs. I just wanted to protect the sport I love. I feel sorry for Dwain because he was a pawn in it all. I don't want any youngster going through what he went through. That's why I made such a stand. It was something I had to do. I have a seven-year-old son who is impressionable."
Mark Lewis-Francis, a team-mate in the relay in Athens, is set to have his lifetime suspension from the Olympics lifted. The British Olympic Association is expected to announce in the next few days that an independent appeals panel has decided his positive test for cannabis should not exclude him from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the 2012 games in London. The appeals panel ruled that Lewis-Francis was not guilty of a serious offence involving anabolic steroids.
Lewis-Francis tested positive for the recreational drug at the European Indoor Championships in Madrid in 2005 and was stripped of his 60m silver medal. He received only a public warning from the International Association of Athletics Federations and was not suspended.
At the world junior championships in Beijing the 400m runner Martyn Rooney failed to add another gold to the one won by Harry Aikines-Aryeetey in the 100m on Wednesday. The 19-year-old Croydon runner finished third, behind Trinidad's Renny Quow. Rooney had broken Roger Black's 21-year-old UK junior record when he ran 45.35sec at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne but was more than half-a-second outside that time in China in 45.87, 0.13 behind Quow, for Britain's first medal in the event since 1990.