File photo of Avinash Sable© X (formerly Twitter)
National record holder 3000m steeplechaser Avinash Sable finished ninth in the season-ending Diamond League final with a below-par time on Friday. Birthday boy Sable, who turned 30 on Friday, clocked 8 minute and 17.09 seconds to finish ninth in the 10-man field in his debut DL final. Amos Serem of Kenya emerged as the Diamond League champion with a time of 8:06.90, while reigning Olympic and world champion Soufiane El Bakkali (8:08.60) of Morocco was second in the season-ending finale. Mohamed Amin Jhinaoui of Tunisia was third with 8:09.68. World champion and Paris Olympics silver medallist javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra will be in action on Saturday.
Sable had finished 11th in the Paris Olympic Games with a time of 8:14.18.
He had finished 14th in the overall Diamond League standings with three points from two meetings. But four athletes ranked higher than him — Lamecha Girma (injured) of Ethiopia, Geordie Beamish of New Zealand, Ryuji Mura of Japan and Hillary Bor of the USA — pulled out, allowing him to sneak inside the top 10 cut-off.
Five meetings out of the 14 in the DL series across the world this season had men’s 3000m steeplechase event.
Reigning Asian Games champion Sable had finished sixth with a national record time of 8:09.91 — bettering his own earlier mark — in the Paris leg of the Diamond League on July 7. He was 14th at the Silesia leg with a time of 8:29.96 on August 25.
Each Diamond League season finale champion is awarded a ‘Diamond Trophy’, USD 30,000 prize money and a wild card for the World Athletics Championships.
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