Avinash Sable wants to forget the Commonwealth Games silver quickly. “I need to forget this achievement soon,” the 3000m steeplechase medallist tells The Hindu, on his return from Birmingham.
“I have to restart training as if I have not achieved anything. I do feel happy. But the main focus is to not think that I have done something extraordinary. I remember my losses and learn from them. I forget my victories.”
This mentality is perhaps what helped Sable overcome the disappointment of having finished 11th at the World Championships. In what was the slowest steeplechase final in World Championships history, he clocked 8:31.75s, his worst time since October 2019. In Birmingham, he went 8:11.20s and bettered his best performance for the ninth time.
“It was a very difficult time,” Sable says of the period after the Worlds. “I had never experienced such a slow race in my life. I had done a lot of speed workout and still I could do nothing. I finished 11th and I thought, ‘If I couldn’t achieve anything with so much good practice, maybe I won’t achieve anything ever’.”
But the despondency didn’t last long. Belief in his methods soon returned, enough to tell the 27-year-old that he could break the Kenyan hegemony (all 18 medals in men’s steeplechase since 1998).
“When I was in the U.S, I used to practise with Kenyan athletes as an equal. I thought, ‘If I can practise with them, why can’t I compete?’ So, I told myself that a medal was the target, whichever colour.
“But once there, I wanted to win gold. Maybe there was a slight mistake in where I tried to take off. I still had a lot of energy left but I couldn’t beat him (Abraham Kibiwot).”
The difference was just five hundredths of a second. One of the endearing images from CWG will be of Sable, with the whole crowd behind him, nearly beating Kibiwot. But Sable, like always, wants to look at the bigger picture.
“If you keep thinking about the CWG and Asian levels, you cannot win at the Worlds,” he says. “When I was young, all I wanted in the army was a promotion as Havaldar. Then, I wanted to do well in cross country running. That’s all.
“But when I moved from cross country to steeplechase, that’s when things changed. I got a promotion also. I then told myself: Fight for the things that you won’t get easily, that no Indian is thinking, of beating the Kenyans, and winning medals at the Worlds.”
This is probably why Sable wants to forget the CWG silver. India, though, is unlikely to.
