Kolkata: 3000m steeplechaser Avinash Sable ignited faint hopes of India’s first medal in a distance-running event on Saturday morning (Friday night in the USA) when he reached the World Athletics Championships final for the second time in his career. The 26-year-old runner clocked 8:18.75 seconds to finish third in the heat and directly qualify for the final.
His performance on the night was a reminder that the 27-year-old army man is among the most consistent athletes India has produced in recent years. Of course, Sable may yet not have the caliber of javelin star Neeraj Chopra of clinching a medal on the big stage but has the Olympic champion’s knack of peaking at the right time in a season.
Whether it’s the 2019 Doha Worlds or the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Avinash has made it a point of breaking his national record at the events that matter. This is surely a tremendous growth for an athlete, who took up steeplechase in 2016 on the insistence of his long-time and former coach Captain Amrish Kumar. Since then, the athlete shaved off close to one minute on his first recorded timing while breaking the national record nine times eventually to 8.12.48 seconds at the Rabat Diamond League in June. In between, he improved his national record at the 2019 World Championship twice and then at the Tokyo Olympics last year, where he was the fastest non-qualifier with a new NR of 8:18.12 seconds.
Catching two-time World Champion Kipruto off guard
However, the major breakthrough in his career was still at the Diamond League in Rabat, where he finished a creditable fifth at his first major event of the season while competing against Morocco’s Olympic champion Soufiane El Bakkali and Kenya’s reigning World champion Conseslus Kipruto, Tokyo silver medallist Lamecha Girma among other giants.
What stood out in the race was Sable matched 2016 Rio Olympic champions Kipruto’s pace at the end of the race for a photo finish while Bakkali was 14 seconds faster to set the current world-leading time of 7:58.28 seconds in front of the home crowd.
In order to understand, why the result was crucial, it’s important to change the general viewpoint of how to look at mid-distance running events, which are highly technical disciplines. Alike, the sprint and quarter-mile events, mid-distance events (800m to 3000m) — often dominated by Ethiopian and Kenyan runners due to natural endurance advantage — require you to have the pace to match that of the leading pack.
Strategy plays a pivotal role in such races as the leading runners (in Sable’s case Bakkali) often decide the pace of the race to their convenience. It’s often done with the purpose to utilise their natural advantage during the final yards of the race. If you watch Sable’s heat race at last year’s Olympics, he led the pack for more than half of the race but at the fag end of the race, the Indian couldn’t stop the Ethiopians and Kenyans from pulling away. Sable had no answer to the burst of pace his rivals produced towards the end and had to settle for the consolation of a new national record.
“He got it wrong in Tokyo,” recalled his former coach Amrish while speaking to Firstpost. “Avinash decided to set the pace in Tokyo and ran out of energy by the time of the final two laps. He couldn’t stop them from outpacing him. We both knew he is capable of touching 8:05 at that time but the strategy wasn’t correct.”
Coach Amrish’s words make much more sense if you watch the steeplechaser’s Diamond League run in Rabat. Unlike Tokyo, at no point during the race, Sable made an attempt to take lead. He disappeared into the crowd as Bakkali, along with Tokyo silver medallist Lamecha Girma pulled away from the rest of the pack while setting the race pace. Bakkali eventually took the race ahead of Girma by less than a second but Sable had a race of his own and had the legs to match Kipruto towards the end in a never-seen-before finish of his career.
One may still have their doubt that Kipruto probably had an off day as the two-time World Champion is capable of clocking much faster (PB of 8:00.12 secs). Sable, who now trains under Colorado Springs-famed coach Scott Simmons in USA, still showed that he is no more the also-ran he used to be until the last Olympics.
All set to rewrite national record
Former coach Amrish, who now runs the Captain Amrish Kumar Sports Academy in Jasala, Shamli for long-distance runners, wasn’t pleased to see him set the pace again during the heats last Saturday and urged him to use more of his Rabat race strategy.
“He is capable of going 8:05 seconds, which also puts him in medal contention and would be a new national record. But I am uncertain if setting the pace again as he did during the heats would help. The race pace came down to over 8:18 seconds eventually and allowed his rivals to push him back.
"I was afraid for a moment that he wouldn’t directly qualify as he fell behind but luck favoured him at the right time with one of the runners (Kenya’s Olympic bronze medallist Benjamin Kigen) tripping towards the end and allowed Avinash to overtake. I hope some luck will be on our boy’s side on Monday as well because we may witness history,” the coach concluded.
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