Four years ago, Avinash Sable produced one of the defining moments of India’s campaign at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Although his powerful finishing kick fell just short, he smashed his own national record and nearly ran down future Olympic bronze medallist Abraham Kibiwot to win a silver medal in the 3000m steeplechase, ending in the process a 28-year Kenyan monopoly on the podium.

But Sable, now 30, says he can’t guarantee that he’ll be in Glasgow for the 2026 Games. As he prepares to make his return from a knee injury that ruled him out for much of last year’s athletics season, Sable is still not sure if he’ll be able to match his form at the Birmingham Games.

“If everything goes well, then I feel I can be in the shape I was in (four years ago). But if everything doesn’t go well, if I’m not fully fit, then even if I qualify for the Indian team, I’d rather skip the Commonwealth Games. I don’t want to go to the Commonwealth Games just to participate,” he tells Sportstar.

These days Sable is to be found in the Inspire Institute of India campus in Vijayanagar, as he looks to get himself in shape for next month’s Federation Cup in Ranchi, where he’ll be making his return. He admits his comeback is still a work in progress.

“I returned to training in January this year. Earlier this month I went to Ooty for some high-altitude training, but I felt a lot of tightness in my body after. I felt I was lacking strength, so I came to IIS to improve. Right now I’m still not at 100 per cent. I think I’m at about 70-80 percent of where I was,” he says.

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This is an unusual position for Sable to be in. Before he limped off the track with a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) at last year’s Diamond League in Monaco, Sable had felt he was one of the rarest things in elite sport—an athlete who’d never been injured.

“I had suffered one small injury at the start of my career, but I thought I’d never get seriously injured. I hadn’t even suffered any pain after training. I was in probably the best shape of my life before the Monaco Diamond League,” he says.

Suddenly, though, he was looking at undergoing a major surgery with the knowledge that not only was his season over, but he also would have to spend a long time away from the running track.

At 30, Sable wondered whether he was running out of time. The timing of his injury—last July—meant he was going to miss out on the World Championships and that it would take a lot of effort to recover for the 2026 Commonwealth and Asian Games.

Second thoughts about surgery

Initially Sable says he had even hoped to put off his surgery. “I thought that maybe I could run at the World Championships even with that torn ACL. The doctors I consulted told me that if I were running any other event like the 5000m or 10,000m, they might have even considered it, but the steeplechase is a very high-impact event because it has the steeple jump and the water hazard. The doctors told me that if I got injured again, then it would become really hard to recover for the Commonwealth and Asian Games. If I missed those events this year, I genuinely wasn’t sure whether I would be in a position to compete in the next edition of these Games. I didn’t even know if I was going to be an athlete then. Four years is a very long time in sport,” he says.

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Sable eventually did get the surgery done, but he reckons the road to recovery was among the toughest things he’d had to face in his career. “My heart was saying I needed to run, but my body wasn’t supporting me. I first learned to walk with a brace. Even that was hard. It was all very new for me. I would try to test myself. But it would hurt every time I’d try to do something. This journey has been really hard,” he says.

Doubts often crept into his mind. When his steps hurt, he admitted being fearful about whether he would ever be able to move without pain. He also wondered whether he would ever be as good as he once was and whether he would ever rediscover the kind of form in the steeplechase that saw him compete at two separate Olympic finals and win Asian Games gold alongside his Birmingham heroics.

Avinash Sable celebrates after winning the 3,000m steeplechase final at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou. | Photo Credit: AFP

“What finally helped me to overcome those fears was simply taking each day at a time and going through every individual stage of my recovery. First I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk. But then I was able to. I didn’t think I would be able to jog, but I did. If I got through all of that, then one day I can return to my best as well,” he says.

Finding his best

He’ll need to be. The Athletics Federation of India has set the qualification standard for the Commonwealth Games in the 3000m steeplechase at 8.30.26. Amongst active Indian athletes, only Sable, who currently holds the national mark of 8.09.91, has ever run faster than that.

Sable, though, isn’t just looking to meet that qualification standard. “It’s not a big thing to qualify for the Commonwealth Games. I only want to take part in the Commonwealth Games if I’m fully fit. Otherwise I don’t see the point,” he says.

For now Sable’s mind is focussed on getting back to form in the 3000m steeplechase and defending his CWG and Asiad medals. But he’s more open-minded about the future. “I think next year I want to try some other event. I have a lot of attachment to the steeplechase because it’s the event that gave me my recognition. I wonder if there’s another event that I might be good in that I haven’t tried because I’ve been so focussed on the steeplechase. At the world level, there’s no athlete who does both the steeplechase and something else. So maybe it’s time for me to give my priority to something else and see if it’s something I could do,” he says.

But that’s for the future. For now Sable doesn’t want to do something new. He just wants to discover his old form. “I just want to run close to what I’ve done earlier. On the inside, I’m very motivated. But until I come on the track and actually run a time that is at least close to what I’ve done before, I don’t think I’ll have that confidence,” he says.  

Published on Apr 24, 2026