VALENCIA, Spain — Wedged between an outdoor world championship and a particularly high-profile Olympics in Beijing, the indoor meet that ended here Sunday was for connoisseurs only.

A world championship, even with banked turns and a roof overhead, should attract more of the world’s best if it really wants to be worthy of the moniker and a global audience.

Among the missing in Valencia were all the men who won running events at last year’s outdoor championships in Osaka, Japan, including the American sprinter Tyson Gay, the American 400-meter star Jeremy Wariner and Ethiopia’s distance king, Kenenisa Bekele.