By Richard Gibson, PA Sport

It may all seem a dim and distant memory now, but there was a time when a pair of British athletes ruled the globe in middle-distance running.

For a gloriously golden era Steve Ovett and Seb Coe traded world records and Olympic medals with a series of displays that lit up tracks worldwide.

Although Ovett and Coe rarely met, apart from their epic Olympic confrontations in Moscow in 1980, they spearheaded the assault on the history books.

Brighton-born Ovett, who used to train on the sand dunes of South Wales, and Coe were chalk-and-cheese personalities though united with precocious athletics ability.

Ovett's blistering finishing kick - and his trademark wave to the crowd in the final metres - had made him a recognisable figure before he was crowned European 1500 metres champion in Prague in 1978.

Coe was favourite to make it a British double over two laps only to finish third behind Ovett in their first track clash, but the following year he produced a six-week long record-breaking blitz that shook the world.

He took 800m running into a new era in Oslo on July 5, 1979, when he shattered the record with a time of one minute 42.4seconds, returning to the Bislett Stadium 12 days later to capture the mile mark in 3:49.0.

Just under a month later, Coe targeted the 1500m world record, which he captured in Zurich's Weltklasse Stadium in 3:32.03 to officially become the first man to hold all three marks.

Coe added the rarely-run 1000m record in 1980, but despite being hot favourite to be crowned Olympic 800m champion he got his tactics all wrong and saw his great rival Ovett force him into the silver medal spot.

Coe had been ousted in his favourite event by his greatest rival - a bitter pill to swallow.

The experience could have broken many athletes, but Coe recovered to become the first man to defeat Ovett over 1500m for three years as he triumphed in Moscow's Olympic Stadium with his jaded team-mate third.

Such was the fierce competition between the duo that Jurgen Straub, of East Germany, snook in between them almost unnoticed.

All eyes had been on the old enemies in Moscow.

By then, Ovett had captured Coe's mile record in Oslo and on the same track equalled the 1500m time which he then claimed for himself after the Olympics with a stunning 3:31.36 in Koblenz.

Undaunted, Coe regained the mile record in Zurich the following summer. It lasted a week, as Ovett returned to Koblenz to recapture the mark with a time of 3:48.40.

But just two days later in Brussels, Coe completed an astonishing nine days of middle-distance running by the duo by shattering Ovett's new best by the incredible margin of just over a second.

The new time of 3:47.33 would last for four years until another Brit Steve Cram, by then the country's number one, himself took a second off the record in Oslo with Coe back in third.

Coe also lowered his own 800m mark in 1981, clocking an astonishing 1:41.73 in Florence, a time which stood for 16 years until equalled then finally broken by Denmark's Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer.

Cram would also claim the 1500m mark in 1985 from Ovett who had lost it two years earlier - though for just a week - to the American Sydney Maree.

Gateshead Harrier Cram had begun the transition of power in Helsinki in 1983 when he captured the 1500m title at the inaugural world championships with Ovett out of the medals in fourth.

Coe had been unable to bid for the 800m crown because of illness which threatened his career.

He was out for months and needed to be controversially selected for the 1984 Olympics despite losing the 'trial race' to Peter Elliott.

But in Los Angeles, Coe answered his critics as he outkicked Cram to become the first man to win back-to-back 1500m titles, making his defiant finger-pointing gesture to the British press afterwards.

Ovett had dropped out of that race, overcome by chest pains which had caused him to collapse and spend two days in hospital after the 800m final in which Coe had taken silver.

The rivalry was all but spent, epitomised by Ovett pushing himself to the limit, and with it the days of Britain's middle-distance greatness were finally coming to an end - African runners dominated from the late 1980s onwards.

But for a while at least Britons had left the rest in their wake.