Tokyo 2020: Avinash Sable misses out on final despite national record run

For Avinash Sable and his coach Amrish Kumar, the goals for the Tokyo Olympics were straightforward: run a time that Sable has never run before. Kumar, Indian Army’s long-distance running coach, told his pupil that even if he were to come last in his 3,000m steeplechase race in Tokyo, it was fine as long as he ran his personal best.

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And the 26-year-old from Mandava, a village in Maharashtra's drought-hit Beed district, did just that. Not only did Sable register his personal best but also lowered his own national record, clocking 8:18.12s in Heat 2 of the 3,000m steeplechase on Friday. The seventh-place finish in his heat, however, was not enough to earn the Armyman a place in the final, narrowly losing out in the final 15 as the fastest runner to have failed to qualify.

“He (Sable) gave it absolutely everything in terms of the optimal capacity at this point of his career,” Kumar said from Tokyo. “He came here with the target of doing his best, and he did. To return with a national record from the Olympics, given the level of the international athletes, is not a small thing.”

From each of the three heats, the top three finishers get automatic entry into the final while the next six with the fastest times across the heats qualify as "fastest losers". Sable clocked a better time than all the three runners in the final Heat 3 but was the seventh-best among those who were in line for non-automatic qualification, and 13th overall.

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“This is how the rules are, and we knew this beforehand,” Kumar said. “The runners in Heat 3, with the advantage of knowing exactly how much was required to qualify, would have set their pace accordingly.”

Despite the final miss, Sable ran a fine race in the Tokyo heat, not once losing pace with the pack and even gaining a slender lead for a brief while. At the 1,000m mark, he was sixth, and maintained his seventh place at the 2,000m and at the finish line. The time of 8:18.12s cut a good couple of seconds off his previous national mark of 8:20.20s set in the Federation Cup in March this year.

Since turning from cross country to steeplechase in 2017, Sable has set a new national record five times, including in the 2019 World Championships final where he became the first Indian man to enter a Worlds final in the event and qualify for the Olympics.

Sable trained in Ooty and Bengaluru for the entirety of the last year and a half after the pandemic pushed the Games back, even contracting Covid-19 in April. “It’s an excellent performance considering the circumstances leading up to it. We will now turn our focus to the World Championships and the Asian Games. Whenever he has competed so far, he has come out giving his best. Our target will remain the same going ahead. And hopefully one day, his day will come,” Kumar said.

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