There was outrage when four-time Olympic medallist Kharlan, including a gold at Beijing 2008, was disqualified at the International Fencing Federation (FIE) Fencing World Championships in Milan after beating Anna Smirnova for refusing to shake the hand of her Russian opponent, competing as a neutral but, who judging by her social media channels, is an enthusiastic supporter of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

That left Kharlan’s place at Paris 2024 in doubt until Bach made an unprecedented intervention offering her an "additional quota place".

It would have, of course, been a travesty if Kharlan was unable to compete in the French capital next year as a result of what happened last week in Italy, although it sticks in the craw to see Bach present himself as the knight in shining armour.

After all, it is Bach who has almost single-handedly created the circumstances which forced the 32-year-old from Mykolaiv, a target for Russian missiles, to have to compete against a rival who posed for pictures with members of the Red Army and posted them on Facebook.

Bach's unilateral decision to offer Kharlan a place sets a dangerous precedent of the IOC intervening in a sport that is supposed to be independent (although Bach’s history as an Olympic gold medallist in the sport and close relationship with Alisher Usmanov, the FIE President until he was forced to step aside when he was added to sanctions lists following Putin’s invasion, meant in this particular case lines were always blurred).

Is Bach, for example, going to offer the seven-time Olympic swimming gold medallist Katie Ledecky a place if she is unable to take part in the United States trials because she is ill?

Or table tennis superstar Ma Long the opportunity of winning a third consecutive singles title if he is left off China's team?

Or Spain’s tennis legend Rafael Nadal the chance, at 38, to lift the Olympic singles title and complete a record-breaking career because he does not have enough ranking points?

Of course, none of those scenarios would come close to comparing to the nightmare situation that Kharlan has been plunged into. But that is the problem of precedents, as any lawyer like Bach well knows, once they have been set, they are considered as authority for deciding subsequent cases.

Bach's intervention to ensure Kharlan can compete at the Olympics is not completely unprecedented as 35 years ago one of his predecessors as IOC President, Juan Antonio Samaranch, had tried to use his position to offer Sebastian Coe a wildcard to compete at Seoul 1988 in a case that made front page headlines around the world and split British sport down the middle.

The affair had begun early in in August that year when Coe, then 31 and the winner of the gold medal in the 1500 metres in the two previous Olympics at Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984, descended from his Swiss mountain training camp to compete in Great Britain's Olympic trials.

The trials were part of a new selection process for the British Olympic team. Before that year, the teams were chosen by a panel of selectors who considered past performances, current fitness and overall likelihood of bringing home a medal. Their choices were then ratified by the then British Amateur Athletics Board (BAAB).

Such a system had saved Coe four years earlier when, having missed most of the previous two years through injury and illness, he had been picked to run in California, despite a loss in the trials to the unlucky Yorkshireman Peter Elliott. It was a brave selection decision which was to reap fine reward as Coe raced to an Olympic record before unleashing a manic celebration that he later compared to an "out of body" experience and which he admitted his mother disapproved of.

Under the new system for Seoul 1988, however, competition was held in Birmingham for the first two slots for each event, with the third left open for "discretionary" appointment by the selectors and the BAAB.

When the new British system had been unveiled earlier that year, Coe had complained that, because the complete trials were held over one weekend, athletes would find it difficult to compete in more than one event. Finally, he signed up to bid for a 1500m position, making it clear he also expected to be chosen for the 800m discretionary slot on the merits of his record, which included winning silver medals at Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 and holding the world record.

At the 1500m Olympic trials, Coe struggled to a fourth-place finish in the qualifying round, not even making it into the final. The problem, he claimed at the time, was that he had not allowed his body enough time to adjust to the altitude change from his Saint Moritz training camp. But he remained confident he would be awarded the discretionary slot for the 800m.

Britain’s Olympics selectors voted unanimously to give the slot to Coe. But the BAAB Committee, by an 11-to-10 vote, overturned that recommendation and awarded it to Elliott, the silver medallist in the previous year’s World Championships.

Coe responded graciously, saying the decision was a "great personal disappointment, but I want to wish the best of luck, fitness and form to all those who have been selected for this highest honour of representing their country at the Olympic Games."

His father and coach, Peter Coe, was not so forgiving, and described it as "a political decision" that had "stripped [his son] of his dignity." The BAAB Council had been "gunning" for Sebastian, Peter Coe claimed, ever since 1985, when the British Sports Council, which Coe was vice-chairman of and led its powerful Olympic Review Committee in one of his first steps into politics, decided that athletics would receive none of about £5.5 million ($7 million/€6.5 million) in Government funds awarded to various sports, on the grounds that it already earned nearly that amount each year from television and sponsorship.

Elliott received more than 1,000 good-luck cards through the post following the announcement of his selection, but left-leaning tabloid newspaper Daily Mirror ran a "Coe must go" campaign and compared Elliott to a "carthorse" in a cartoon. It is surely the only time in the newspaper’s 120-year history that it has backed a Tory over a carpenter in a steel mill, like Elliott was at the time. 

"After the third piece of hate-mail, I told my mum and dad to just burn any others that came in," Elliott said. "But I’ll always remember the first. It said: 'I’m proud to be British, not proud to be linked with you. I think you’re despicable and I hope you fall flat on your face.'"

A few days later, it was revealed that Samaranch had written to the BAAB chairman Ewan Murray, requesting that the decision not to choose Coe be reconsidered. "Sebastian Coe is a great Olympic champion," Samaranch said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper’s legendary reporter John Rodda. "I know that many British people, as well as others from other countries, want to see him run in Seoul, so I decided to write and ask that the question be considered again."

The BAAB's first reaction was that the "quite extraordinary" suggestion was impossible. But then, Rodda and his colleagues, including David Miller, then of The Times, warned the BAAB Board that it did not want to make an enemy of Samaranch at a time Manchester was bidding for the 1996 Olympic Games.

Murray wrote back to Samaranch to say that if the IOC President wished to create a special place for Coe himself - arbitrarily and unprecedentedly expanding the three-man limit on team size outlined by the Olympic Charter - and if the British Olympic Association and the International Amateur Athletic Federation agreed - they would not object.

The backlash was immediate. It was quickly pointed out that other leading athletes, including Americans Greg Foster and Al Joyner, both of whom missed out at the US trials, had been given no such special treatment. America’s double Olympic 400m hurdles gold medallist Edwin Moses, told reporters that "no one has a divine right to be an Olympian . . . The finishing line doesn't lie."

Coe had always been a personal favourite of Samaranch. At the Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden in 1981, he gained his attention, and affection, with an eloquent speech against drug abuse by athletes and a call for stiffer penalties against those caught cheating.

A member of the IOC Athletes' Committee, Coe was widely expected to eventually be offered a place as an IOC member and, perhaps, even groomed to replace Samaranch when his time as President came to an end.

British rival Steve Cram, who had replaced Coe as the sport’s leading middle-distance runner having broken his world record for the mile, was scything about the proposal. "I live in a part of the world where people have to work for what they get," Cram, whose hometown Jarrow was one of the most deprived in the country, said. "It is wrong for the International Olympics Committee to be playing the old pals act."

Olympic 5,000m champion Said Aouita said, "This is ridiculous."

Samaranch conceded that his plan was doomed and telephoned Coe, who revealed that his biggest supporter had called "to say that he did not feel able, after all, to extend to me a personal invitation to compete in the Seoul Olympic Games."

Samaranch admitted that it would have been breaking the rules if his plan had come to fruition. 

"The Olympic Charter is very clear," he said. "It says only three athletes per country. Also, the rules of the athletic federation - it's quite impossible to send a wild card to the Olympic Games.

"Always if you have a consensus, it is possible to go farther than the rules, but if some people say 'yes' and some people say 'no,' I believe it is better not to move."

Peter Elliott overcame a chronic groin injury to win a silver medal in a 1500m won by unknown Kenyan Peter Rono and Cram finished fourth.

The career of Sebastian Coe, Olympic runner, was over. 

But his relationship with the Olympics, of course, had many more laps to run and the trackside clock is still ticking.