A finely framed South African runner who looked more like a dancer than a runner, and was in the worst lane on the athletics track out wide in lane eight, had skipped to the front in the 400 metres final. It looked bold but naive. He was like so many athletes who, like Gollum, surrender to desire and abandon logic.

The South African kept dancing faster than the field. The longer it went the stronger Wayde Van Niekerk looked.

"Watching the clock as he was coming down the home straight I was thinking this was just outrageous. Then you see where Kirani and Merritt were in relation to him and how he held his composure. I just felt this energy overwhelm me and I couldn't move. Just fathoming how fast 43.03 was," Solomon said.

"I'm young and naive and I haven't been around athletics long enough to really put a lot of weighting behind the comment but that may have been the greatest run we've ever seen, but that's how it felt to me at the time."

The shock for Solomon was not just the disbelief at what he had seen but of what it also meant for him. Solomon should have been in the race. Four years earlier in London he had been in the race. He was in the Olympic final.

He had come to London in 2012 fresh from success in Barcelona at the world junior games. He was given a discretionary place to run the 400 for Australia, which caused controversy at the time but he quickly validated the decision by becoming the first Australian since Darren Clark to make the final.

The world awaited. He was young, fresh and fast. The others on the podium in London that Olympic night were all younger than Solomon but he was of that generation ready to spend a decade racing one another.

A scholarship to Stanford University to study medicine and race seemed the idyllic life path.

Five years later though and Solomon has essentially been anonymous. Small injuries became bigger ones and eventually he had major surgery on his hamstring after the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. Since then he hasn't been injured and now feels stronger and faster.

Solomon chased the clock before Rio and missed out on qualifying for the Olympics by one-hundredth of a second. To then witness what Van Niekerk did in that final felt like an extra injustice. Just as he gets fit the sport raises the bar and changes the idea of what is fast and what is good enough.

"At first it was like 'wow, how are we going to compete with this?'. Michael Johnson was untouchable and no-one had come marginally close to his time of 43.18 seconds, and growing up that was the time I had in my head and then to see Wayde in one race just smoke that time like it was just amateur was just unbelievable," Solomon said.

"It took a few days for it to decompress in me and to realise this is where the new standard is, this is where we've got to go and this is the guy who's going to help bring us all up in the same way that when Michael Johnson was running there were plenty of guys running 43s.

"Wayde has helped set a new benchmark in the 400, he's inspiring things that a lot of us didn't think were possible so we're attacking the race and attacking training with new thoughts that it is possible now and it's time for other athletes, including myself, to get out there and get it done as well."

Solomon has got it done and got himself back again in the world frame. He spent the year chasing a qualifying time and finally got it done in California.

"I'd been terribly unlucky with conditions. I had four races in six weeks and it had just been hurricane conditions every single time,'' he said. ''I was getting blown out of my lane, I couldn't wear a hat. When you're looking for a time, which I had been for so long after only just missing it for Rio, it began to get on my nerves.

"It was heartbreaking every time to finish and be throwing up after the race and know the time wasn't what I wanted. And finally after graduation, when I didn't have the stress of school, I finally got a still night and was able to execute the race I knew was in my legs and the qualifier came."

Solomon feels like he is ready to resume his career after a hiatus. For the first time in a long time he is fit and for the first time enters a world championships from a season's-best run.

"I haven't been at a major championship for a while so I've missed out on the opportunities to race against the big boys but this is where I feel confident, where I feel comfortable, where I feel hungry for success."

Solomon knows the sport has moved ahead without him but he is hoping to be caught up in its draft.

"I set my expectations high. I know the 400 is in a different place than it was four or five years ago when I was last in London but I think I'm a different athlete as well.

"There's no reason why I can't push for a position in the final and then going forward from that I now have a new confidence, that I probably didn't have in the London Olympic final, that I know that I deserve to be there now and I know I can compete at that level."

He knows Van Niekerk is almost running a different race now to the rest of the field - much like Usain Bolt has done for his career - but he likes the idea of chasing someone with the target on their back.

He is also fan enough of the sport to wish most for the race that won't happen at these championships.

"I only wish Wayde had the opportunity to race against Bolt at these championships because I think it would have been a beautiful handing of the baton to the king of athletics."