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While Dina Asher-Smith was processing the incredibly brutal postponement of her Olympic aspirations, it was necessary to wonder where exactly the wider British athletics team have hidden their Plan B.
It wasn’t just the death of a dream that played out amid her tears on Saturday, because suddenly the paper has been pulled off the massive cracks Asher-Smith was concealing.
There have long been queries over the value in the £23 million of UK Sport funding for athletics and by extension the limited quality of the bloated team of 75 sent to Tokyo.
Dina Asher-Smith was supposed to head-up Team GB's athletics squad but is now injured
Zharnel Hughes made the 100m final but a blatant false-start turned GB's Games into a farce
With Asher-Smith out of the 100metres and 200m with hamstring trouble, only the 4x100m relay remains of what was supposed to be her three-pronged attack on the medals.
With the quartet’s hopes on Friday contingent on her fitness, the question is whether the team hierarchy have enough bullets to avoid their worst haul since 1976. Those Games in Montreal brought one medal and Athens in 2004 was the next lowest with four, and already this group is tracking to be somewhere in between.
To see Reece Prescod false start in a 100m semi-final, and then for Zharnel
