I have stopped following the herd now, I try to lead them: Avinash Sable

PUNE: Avinash Sable has learnt to break records, win medals, and beat the Kenyans. But more importantly, he has learnt to think like a winner.
One chat with the Beed runner assures that his silver in the 3000m steeplechase event at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games was no fluke. As one listens to him speak, he comes across as a solid prospect for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
An army runner, Sable reckons he is a changed man post his experience at the Tokyo Olympics.

Sable, who returned to the Army Sports Institute, where he is training for the Diamond League, remains unperturbed with the hype that surrounds him. He stays humble about most of his achievements, including breaking the National record nine times.

“I never felt breaching NR is an achievement. My aim is to take the timing as low as I can. I want to take it to the sub-8 minute. The aim is to take the timing to a level where the upcoming athletes feel motivated to breach that and at the same time believe that if I can achieve it, they can do it too,” Sable, 27, told TOI.
Sable was noticed first when he broke Gopal Saini’s 37-year-old record in 2018. However, he feels his records shouldn’t take this long to break.

“The faster the records break, the better it is for the growth of the event. If records set by me take another 30 years to break, we will go 30 years behind the world. When I took up this sport, I had a target of 8.29s. The coming batch will now have the target of running 8.05s or maybe 8mins and it is achievable.”

Sable feels training abroad has changed his perspective and has helped him get rid of the complexes that Indian athletes normally have.
“I always thought athletes from other countries have something special that we lack. I thought their training and diet was better than ours, but my perception changed when I went to the US to train with them. I realized that they do similar things, eat things that I also eat. It boosted my confidence when I started beating them in training. So, then it boils down to the efforts you put in. Nobody is unbeatable,” he said.

At the CWG, Sable’s silver came by beating a powerful group of Kenyans. He feels Kenyans win as they can implement strategies while running in groups.

“You need at least 2-3 athletes to make strategies, being the lone runner, I don’t have that luxury. But I have now learnt to break their strategies. At the World Championships, the race was made so slow and since I didn’t have experience of something like this, I fell in the trap. I later realized that I could have gone faster than them and changed the pace of the race. I did that at the CWG. I had prepared to break their strategy and run my own race,” Sable said.

The Indian finished his race in 8.31.75s at the World Championships, his slowest time in five years.

“I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I have stopped following the herd now. I now try to lead them.”

Sable says he has changed as a person and as an athlete after his poor show at the Tokyo Olympics. Sable had timed 8:18:12s in the heats and failed to qualify for the final.

“I was a different person before Tokyo. When you get early success things look good, but it changes once you start to struggle. I have learnt a lot from my failure at the Olympics. Like everybody else, I was hoping to win a medal. But when I couldn’t, I thought a lot for three months and I questioned the purpose of training when I couldn’t win medals. A lot of overthinking happened, and I thought of quitting and didn’t feel like getting out of my bed for months while being home,” he admitted.

“But then I realized I had to put in more effort and when I am getting so much support from the federation, the government, and the army, along with people who are directly responsible for my training, the least I could do was work hard. I got out of the mind games and started training again,” he said.