Usain Bolt has called for a shake-up in athletics to revive a sport suffering, he believes, from the absence of a superstar able to transcend track and field.
Athletics has not recovered from the loss of the world’s fastest man in 2017, the void the charismatic Jamaican left too cavernous for any one individual to fill.
Mondo Duplantis, Noah Lyles, Karsten Warholm, Jakob Ingebrigsten and Fred Kerley currently headline the male side of the sport. Sydney McLaughlin, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Faith Kipyegon, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Athing Mu and Femke Bol lead the way for the women.
Each are generational talents yet, truth be told, they remain little known outside of track and field circles.
"I think the sport now is maybe just missing a superstar," Bolt said. "I mean, when I left, people were looking for the next person who is going to step up and really shine and stand out. That's what the sport is missing right now.”
Track legend Michael Johnson has pointed to the “shrinking" number of true athletics fans and urged the sport, and athletes themselves, to do a better job of storytelling.
"I think we've talked about it for years that the sport needs to change the way it's set up," Bolt told the PA news agency. "I think we need to make it a lot more exciting.
"I think that's a problem with track and field. It's not as exciting so people don't want to watch.
"So, if you don't have a superstar that stands out like I did, then it's going to be hard to draw the big crowds and draw that attention that you want."
Bolt remains the most recognisable face of a sport he left six years ago with World Athletics boss Seb Coe hoping he would stay around to keep the spotlight on track and field.
That he has not is a major source of regret and with him having no plans to return it is down to others to navigate a path back to limelight.
Coe has long urged the post-Bolt generation to "recognise they are in the entertainment business” and while 200m world champion Lyles is one to have done that he can’t carry the load alone.
While he is undoubtedly bringing in fans by marrying flamboyance with talent and interests away from the lane in which he runs, the sport needs more - and it can start by working out how to market prize assets like British 800m star Keely Hodgkinson.
Bolt, who has signed up to play in Soccer Aid for UNICEF on June 11, concludes that athletics "needs to be changed a little bit" and "adjusted" so people can be "excited and enjoy watching the meets and stuff".
He added: "We have talked about it for many years, but nothing has happened."
:: Tickets for Soccer Aid For UNICEF are on sale now via www.socceraid.org.uk/tickets with a family of four able to attend for just £60 - two adults and two children
