Edwards announces retirement

Edwards reckoned he had subsequently made a "miraculous" enough recovery in the past fortnight which could still see him win a 16th major championship medal. He jumps in the qualifiers tomorrow with the final on Monday.

Team-mates admitted they had had no inkling of his decision. Team manager Max Jones called it the "end of an era because British athletics has said goodbye to Colin Jackson this year and will now be saying farewell to another of its greatest stars."

Edwards seemed choked as he said: "I will jump here and that will be the end of it. The question of when I'd retire has dogged me for two years but now I've made it, I'm at peace with it. I'm going to miss athletics but I'll not be coaxed back by Athens regardless of what happens here. It's definitely the right time to go."

Yet the man who has won Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles still believes he has one last title in him. "I'm getting all the old excitement. I'm in good shape and if my ankle holds out I think I can still jump a long way," he said.

It will be a tall order, though, for a man who has gradually been eclipsed by the new Swedish triple jump star Christian Olsson.

The peak of Edwards's incredible form came at the Gothenburg world championships in 1995 when he produced two world records with his first two leaps of the final, a quite unprecedented feat in the sport's history. His 18.29metres mark still stands as a record unlikely to be challenged for years and, even if nothing he has achieved since has quite matched that extraordinary spell, the Olympic victory in Sydney eventually sealed his position in the pantheon.

After achieving everything in the sport, nothing has quite been able to motivate him in the same way since Sydney and he has long been laying the ground for life after athletics with his broadcasting work.

Here, he will be part of the BBC commentary team but, afterwards, his absence on the track will leave a void for British athletics, which, without so many injured luminaries, could be facing their worst-ever world championships here. As Jones said: "It's simple. We're going to miss him."