Avinash Sable: Once a mason in Beed, now a Golden steeplechaser

An Express Investigation: For the last couple of months, 15 reporters gathered data about all of India’s Asian Games medallists in Hangzhou. The analysis provided a few clear-cut trends and some fascinating journeys of athletes that highlight those.

* 50 Number of athletes who come from families with annual income less than Rs 50,000

Avinash Sable, 29, worked as a mason in drought-prone Mandwa, a village in Beed district, after an academy in Aurangabad weeded him out as coaches there didn’t think he had a future as a distance runner. The 12-year-old was spotted by scouts of a state-government scheme but his career had hit a roadblock. Once he finished school, Sable worked for just Rs 100 a day and seemed destined to spend the rest of his life in Mandwa.

His fortunes changed when he appeared for an army recruitment drive. His younger brother Yogesh says it was a taunt about him being on the heavier side that made Sable take up running during his off-duty hours. By then he has been posted in places with extreme weather; freezing cold Saichen and border town of Lalgarh Jattan, where the temperatures touch nearly 50 degree Celsius.

He participated in a cross-country race organised by the army in Hyderabad. Though he was overweight for a runner, army coach Amrish Kumar took him under his wing. Within two years of being added to the army running programme, Sable broke the 3000-metre national record twice. “I kept him away from oily food. He hadn’t joined the army as a sportsperson but he proved he had the talent by finishing in the top-12 despite being overweight. That in itself was an indicator that he had potential,” Kumar said about how the army gave Sable a stepping stone to success. Sable joined the elite training group at the Army Sports Institute in Pune, which became his second home.

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Sable is a naib subedar with the Mahar regiment in the army.

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