The last time a two-day invitation athletics extravaganza was held at Crystal Palace back in 1985, US and British TV between them paid a king's ransom for American star Mary Decker to top the bill and to earn the chance of revenge over Zola Budd after their infamous "tumble and tears" Olympic clash the previous year.

In Los Angeles, Decker, the US darling, had hit the deck after tripping over the controversial Budd in the 3,000 metres final, ending her dream of gold and prompting a flood of tears and recriminations as she blamed the teenage South African-turned-Brit phenomenon, who failed to even medal, for her fall.

An instant raging rivalry was manufactured out of a simple accident and by the next summer, the affair had been so hyped that a £150,000 'grudge' match, at the time the sport's biggest ever payday, was organised. Naturally, it first proved a sell-out and then a complete wash-out with Decker winning at a canter and Budd only able to finish fourth.

Athletics may be rather harder to flog these days but a generation on, organisers of the Aviva London Grand Prix, showcasing two days of athletics of such quality that the odd event - like a stellar women's 100m - wouldn't look out of place in next month's Olympics, have recognised again the value of good old-fashioned head-to-head rivalry to sell their spectacular £400,000 send-off weekend for the British team.

Sadly, their planned international top-of-the-bill tonight, a 100m world championship rematch between Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay was scuppered by the injury to American gold medallist Gay.

Not to worry, though. The good news is that the highlight of the meeting could come instead in the shape of a parochial dust-up over 400m between the world champion, East End girl Christine Ohuruogu and silver medallist Nicola Sanders, a lass from the Home Counties. What could be better at a time when UK track medal prospects look so thin on the ground than for this pair to entertain realistic ambitions of again beating the world over one lap?

Now the bad news for promoters. There's no chance of inventing a Decker-Budd or Tessa Sanderson/Fatima Whitbread-style antipathy between them. They are eminently sensible, not in the slightest impressed by excitable talk of them being a sort of British women's Coe and Ovett and, sorry, but they actually get on with each other pretty well.

As Sanders told me with a shrug earlier this season: "We're rivals because we can compete against each other but it doesn't mean we have to hate each other. Infact, we get on well."

After their fantastic duel at the Osaka championships last August saw Ohuruogu outlast her rival by a mere four-hundredths of a second for the gold, they only raced at the end of last season a couple of times when tired, past their Osaka peak and chasing a few bob on the European circuit. So this is their first meaningful head-to-head for 10 months and, though both are keen to play down any whiff of hype, the race could certainly offer a clue as to whether either will be in shape to offer a serious threat to the American who stands ominously in their path.

Sanya Richards never made it to Osaka, failing to negotiate the cut-throat US trials and having a nightmare year during which she was diagnosed with a rare disease of the immune system, Behcet's Disease. But this year, one of track's brightest faces is back, having run all eight of her races in quicker times, including two sub-50sec clockings, than the Britons have recorded so far this term.

Richards then must be rated a considerable favourite for the one lap-event but her last race before Beijing proved a fairly ordinary 50.38sec win in Stockholm on Wednesday. It may have encouraged both Brits to believe she is beatable.

Sanders, having overcome a couple of niggling injuries, rates her season eerily similar to 2007 when she ran 49.65sec in Osaka after just four 400m races; Ohuruogu's 49.61sec, famously, came just 24 days after completing her year's suspension for missing three doping tests but this season, she promises to be much sharper after honing her speed in 200m races.

In a way, though they seem so different - Ohuruogu, the 5ft 9in, 11st powerhouse versus the elegant-striding nine-and-a-half stone Sanders - and they also seem so similar; slightly introverted, not particularly comfortable with the limelight, stubborn of nature and with a champion's ability to run their best race when it matters. Oh yes, and they're tough as old boots, too.

Maybe Sanders is right when she says tonight's shadow boxing will neither crush her if she loses nor enthral her if she wins. And maybe Ohuruogu is spot on to say: "It is no big issue. Whoever turns up, turns up. I am just there to put a good race in before I leave."

But what a perfect Olympic send-off if the pair did come powering down the home straight together with the 50 seconds barrier in their sights.

Budd versus Decker? No this would be an authentic rivalry.