Asian Games 2023 | Avinash Sable: 'Indian athletes are always under great pressure, because we know our history'

Avinash Sable (in blue) finds himself in the same place ahead of the Asian Games as he did ahead of the CWG: a recent failure from which he is itching to bounce back, while feeling good about his physical readiness. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons 2.0)

In the past twelve months, Avinash Sable has lived a lifetime. The 29-year-old distance-runner from Maharashtra saw his athletics career reach dizzying heights at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in August last year when he broke a 25-year-old podium stranglehold by the Kenyans to win a silver, set his personal best, and break the national record for the ninth time. Then it was a whirlwind of training with the best in the world in the US and in Switzerland, competing in the elite Diamond League, cementing his place as one of the world’s best in the 3000m steeplechase. A year later, this August, he was in the doldrums—failing to make it out of the heats at the 2023 Athletics World Championships in what was the slowest race ever run at the event, and contemplating giving up the sport altogether.

“I thought I should give up running, go back home, and do something else,” Sable said over a video call from his training base in Bengaluru just before leaving for the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. “I had focused on nothing else but the world championship for months, I felt so good in training, I felt I was in peak fitness, fully prepared, and then I went there and could not even make it to the final. I could not accept it.”

After a few days of going through some intense emotions, Sable remembered something important—his origins. The time when the crops failed in their drought-prone village and his parents, at the end of their tether, decided to pull an eight-year-old Sable out of school and put him to work with them at the local brick kiln—according to the UN, brick kilns are some of the most rampant perpetrators of modern slavery. It was only the intervention of a teacher in his school in Beed, Marathwada, that altered Sable’s life. The teacher had seen something of Sable’s running abilities, and offered to pay for his schooling, food, clothes, and sports training.

Two decades later, Sable is one of India’s greatest athletes, a man who broke the national record not once or twice, but nine times.

“There has been so many changes in my life, the struggles of my family have ended, and I am proud of it,” Sable said. “I realized the importance of my journey, that it was not just my work, but the work and sacrifice of so many people involved in my life…

“I came back to the track with a renewed confidence,” he said. “I could take my failure as a learning, and I know that I will not make a mistake this big at the Paris Olympics. So perhaps it was a good thing for me to fail and learn here.”

When it comes to the 3000m steeplechase, there is a lot to learn. Middle- and long-distance races always involve a lot of tactics, but the steeplechase is, inarguably, the most complex and tactical of all: 3 km to cover with 28 hurdles and seven water jumps. Not only do athletes have to work through the usual pacing strategies of distance running—do I start fast and finish fast (the U pacing strategy) or start slow and make up at the end with a big “kick” (acceleration), do I stick to the lead pack and trust the body to hold up? Or stay in my comfort zone and trust the body to provide the final spurt?—but also the vagaries of each obstacle, because even the slightest tussle, or technical error at a hurdle can result in runners being left behind.

The technical difficulties of the race can be gleaned from the fact that the Olympic, World, and World Championship records in the event are all held by different people in both men’s and women’s categories, and that only one woman has won two Olympic medals in the event, and only two men have been Olympic champions twice—Finland’s Volmari Iso-Hollo in 1932 and '36, and Kenya’s Ezekiel Kemboi in 2004 and '12.

“I know that I’m not always racing the way I’m able to train,” Sable says. “Why is it that I am not being able to change the pace when there is a slow race? Why is it that I am able to kick in the final lap even when the whole race is at fast pace? I need to plan better, and I need to understand my pace better, how my body reacts, when it can pick up pace and how much pace it can pick up.”

Learning to read the body is perhaps the toughest aspect of distance running.

“At the 2022 world champs (where Sable ran in the final but finished 11th), I made the mistake of thinking that the slow race would be an easy race for me, that I would just make up for it in the final lap,” he says. “I learnt the hard way that I could not do it, could not time my acceleration to my advantage. At this world championship, the race was slow, but my body did not feel that it was slow at all, I felt like it was a hard pace, and I don’t know why that happened.”

Now you won’t find a single Diamond League event without an Indian. As we do this more and more, we will start winning more too. Indian athletes are always under great pressure, because we know our history, we often approach every competition as the stage where we have to prove ourselves.

“Last year I was home for only about 20 days after the Commonwealth Games (CWG),” Sable said. “This year too it will be like that. I was scared of going abroad to train, I had no confidence in myself. But after the Tokyo Olympics I thought I needed to take more risks. I realized that I had elite timings, I had run an 8:16 already, and I realized I need to train with the best.”

Now, at the international stage, Sable does not feel as lonely as he did when he first began. For one, he trains with fellow Indian 3000m steeplechase and 5000m national record holder Parul Chaudhury, another athlete with great potential who will be at the Asian Games (they’ve also already qualified for the Paris Olympics). Second, there is the growing Indian participation in the Diamond League, the world’s topmost athletics series, where Neeraj Chopra has made it a habit of winning in the last two years, and where two Indian long jumpers, Murali Sreeshankar and Jeswin Aldrin have also begun competing.

“It’s fantastic. The standard of our athletics is slowly improving,” Sable said. “Previously we had hardly any representation in the Diamond League. Now you won’t find a single Diamond League event without an Indian. As we do this more and more, we will start winning more too. Indian athletes are always under great pressure, because we know our history, we often approach every competition as the stage where we have to prove ourselves or fall. This was my mentality too. Now that fear, that nervousness is gone, but there is still a lot of experience to be gained.”

That fearlessness and some of the international experience came to great use at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, where, Sable said, he found a strategy that worked well for him and which he will try to replicate at the Asian Games.

“Firstly, not getting a good result at the world championships before the CWG made me very determined to prove myself at the Games,” Sable said. “The day of the competition I thought to myself, I will not look at anyone else, I will run my own race at my best speed, and then we will see where that goes. In the first lap itself I was right up top, the Kenyans were also going at full pace right from the start, and by the second kilometer I realized that I could comfortably keep up with them.

“At that point I would have been happy with any medal, I just wanted to ensure that I finished top three,” Sable recalled. “It was in the last lap that I found that I had quite a bit of energy left, and I was neck to neck with (Conselsus) Kipruto, the 2016 Olympic champion, and I overtook him, but my last water hurdle wasn’t great, but again in the last 200m I felt like I could fight for the gold, and I went for it full kick.”

Sable finds himself in the same place ahead of the Asian Games as he did ahead of the CWG: a recent failure from which he is itching to bounce back, while feeling good about his physical readiness.

“That’s why I am going to run both the steeplechase and the 5000m at the Asian Games,” Sable said, “and all the mistakes I’ve made so far, all the learning from them, I hope to use to win medals in both events.”

If there’s one thing that the last two years has instilled in Sable, it is a desire to be shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s best.

“Yes, my ambitions have changed,” he said. “I think now that breaking national records is not going to improve me as an athlete, so that’s not my target anymore. I don’t even think it’s enough to be the best at the Asian level, or win a gold at the Asian Games. When I first started competing, the national standard was 9 minutes, and for me that was a big target and a big achievement. Now that I know I can run 8:11, I want to keep improving, keep learning.”