Avinash Sable falters in the tactical race trap, again
Among the top headline acts for Indian athletics in the Budapest World Athletics Championships, he failed to qualify for the 3000m steeplechase final
At last year's World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Avinash Sable was left a bit flummoxed after the slowest men’s 3000m steeplechase final in history. Sucked into a tactical race that saw Tokyo Olympics champion Soufiane El Bakkali win with the slowest Worlds time ever (8:25.13), India's serial national record-breaker clocked a laborious 8:31.75 to finish 11th.
A hurt Sable vowed to learn from that surreal setback, and the 8:11.20 run that fetched him a Commonwealth Games (CWG) silver and new national record less than a month later scripted a turnaround he craved.
A year on at the same World Championships stage in Budapest, the tactical race bug came back to bite India’s top steeplechaser again. Sable, among the top headline acts for Indian athletics in this edition, crashed out on the opening day after finishing seventh in the first 3000m steeplechase heat on Saturday.
Much like that Eugene final, this Budapest heat was a sluggish affair, more a mind game of who will blink first in upping the ante. Sable went into his shell and got stuck in it, clocking a below-par 8:22.24 in Heat 1 topped by Ethiopian Getnet Wale (8:19.99). The Indian’s effort was a fair bit away from his season best of 8:11.63, and personal best of 8:11.20 achieved at the Birmingham CWG.
The 28-year-old's time was still faster than all qualifiers from Heat 2 that was jointly topped by defending champion El Bakkali and American Kenneth Rooks (8:23.66). A rule change meant Sable's seventh place finish gave him no outside chance for a place in the final, where the top five athletes from each of the three heats progressed. Earlier, runners could also make the final cut by time after the automatic slots were locked. But now, for middle-distance events longer than 800m, qualifying from the heats has been made purely based on positions and not the next fastest times.
Which made Sable’s conservative race on Saturday a bit more perplexing. The experienced steeplechaser came into this Worlds on the back of a solid altitude training block in Colorado Springs, USA, and St Moritz, Switzerland, and a quality 8:11.63 at the Silesia Diamond League in Poland last month. The Birmingham CWG last August, where he spectacularly broke the Kenyan hegemony in the event with a sizzling performance, showed what he can produce when he steers his own wheel rather than allow others to dictate his pace.
“Whenever he (Sable) runs a race at his own pace and not according to others’, he does well,” Amrish Kumar, the former long-time coach of Sable -- he now trains with American Scott Simmons – said. “He knows his timing is 8:11, so even if he had gone with a target of 8:15 or 8:16, he would’ve made the final. At the CWG, he pushed himself from the start, which helped him at the end where he did not drop his pace drastically.”
Here, Sable tailed off in the final stretch after largely staying with the slow and steady bunch until then. “This was a slower race and I had to pick up the pace with the others in the end. It was a tactical race. I knew I could push,” said Canada's second-placed Jean-Simon Desgagnes (8:20.04).
Sable, meanwhile, got pulled into the tactical race trap. Running mostly on the outer (second or third) lane, he remained fifth at the first 1000m split and third at the 2000m split without really pushing the pace envelope. He snuck ahead of the thick group briefly at the 2300m mark but thereon, he began to flounder. Pegged back by the water jump where his pace dropped considerably, Sable couldn't get the kick in the final lap to get back into the top five.
“He ran most of the race on the outer and had a couple of bad hurdles where he lost a few seconds," Kumar, who introduced steeplechase to Sable in the Army, said. “He tried to push in the last stretch, which he could’ve attempted earlier.”
Like with the Eugene Worlds and Birmingham CWG, the turnaround from the Budapest Worlds to the Hangzhou Asian Games next month is short. And like last year, Sable will have to quickly put behind another disappointing outing at the world stage and deliver in the continental event. “For me, if he only thinks about his own timing rather than anything else, he will keep improving,” Kumar said. “He should just run his own race, at his own pace.”
Shaili finishes 24th
Young Shaili Singh, in her first World Championships appearance, also could not qualify for the women's long jump final. The 19-year-old promising talent registered a best jump of 6.40m between her first and third attempts of 6.26m and 6.30m, respectively, to finish 24th among the 34 women vying for the 12 final spots. Her personal best is 6.76m, achieved this year.
In the opening day's first medal event delayed by a storm, Vikash Singh was the best Indian at 27th in the 20km men’s race walk. He clocked 1:21:58. Paramjeet Singh Bisht (1:24:02) and Akashdeep Singh (1:31:12) finished 35th and 47th respectively.
