As we enter another winter season and along with it, the annual bloom of city marathons, it would be good to remember that performance-wise, the marathon in India is stuck.
Shivnath Singh’s national record of two hours and 12 minutes in the marathon, set at an event in Jalandhar in 1978, continues intact. It is the longest surviving national record. The closest an Indian got to it was in 2022, when T. Gopi clocked 2:13:39 at the year’s Seoul Marathon. Thereafter, the lull in progression has been thick enough to cut with a knife. Following the failure of its athletes to meet the qualifying time, India did not have a marathon runner at the last Olympic Games. Top athletes have pointed out in conversations with this blog that while 2:12:00 remains a major milestone to cross in the Indian marathon scene, when juxtaposed on the global scenario, it is nothing. The late Kelvin Kiptum’s world record in the men’s marathon stands at 2:00:35.
Alongside, and even as the number of marathons in India has increased considerably over the years, the interest shown by the nation’s sports administration in the discipline has declined. The decline mentioned is not in terms of the support expected to be provided. It is with regard to how the marathon is perceived in the pantheon of disciplines administrators periodically scan to decide which item merits attention. Right now, what one gathers is that within Indian sports administration, the marathon is not a matter of urgency. It has slipped. And it is a strange predicament for this side and that of 42.195 kilometers, improvement appears good enough to warrant support and enthusiasm for those distances. Compared to Shivnath Singh’s national record surviving unchallenged for 46 years, records have been rewritten in disciplines in running up to 10,000m and past 42.195 kilometers.
A brief conversation this blog had with a top Indian sports administrator in December 2024, hinted at how the establishment thinks with regard to the marathon. Although about 42.195 and what Shivnath Singh’s national record still reigning unbroken meant for the marathon in India, the conversation unfailingly touched upon Avinash Sable. Sable has been a phenomenon; a one-man powerhouse in Indian athletics. He rehauled the national record in the men’s 3000m steeplechase several times, featured in the finals of top international competitions and also holds the national record in the men’s half marathon. Sable is among India’s greatest athletes. Although a lot happens when the distance to run is doubled and likening the half to the full marathon is incorrect, Sable’s 2020 national record in the half marathon – 1:00:30 – is less distant from Yomif Kejelcha’s 2024 world record (pending ratification) of 57 minutes and 30 seconds, than the best Indian timing in the full marathon is from the corresponding world record. On the other side of 42.195 kilometers, Indians have rather quickly carved out an impression at the Asian level in the ultramarathon. The overall standing is still hinged to the luxury of having team championships and how a few key ultrarunners deliver but Indian teams have finished on the podium and a handful of international events – ranging from Asia-Oceania championships to world championships – have been held in India.
Following mention of Sable, the administrator quickly veered to the promise seen in the middle to early long distances. The athlete spoken of was Gulveer Singh. In November, at the 2024 Hachioji Long Distance athletics meet in Japan, the 26-year-old had improved his own national record in the 10,000 meters from 27 minutes, 41.81 seconds to 27:14.88. The approach to answering the question indicated the current focus in distance running being on disciplines leading up to the marathon. Performance in the marathon, this blog was told, was expected to be shaped through the interest shown in it by the Indian Army (the Army Sports Institute [ASI] was cited as a nodal player in this context) and interventions by private sports bodies like those associated with Reliance and JSW. There was also a second half in the overall view and it comprised of two points. First, the administrator found it unfair that the current sports ecosystem ran on an architecture of the government investing to do the hard work of finding talent while the private agencies ran with the cream of the talent the government groomed, developed it further and cornered credits accruing thereafter. Second, the administrator felt that the top Indian marathoners were running too many races to get prize money instead of rationing their participation in events.
A portrait of them as people who run for money didn’t sit well with the elite athletes this blog spoke to. First, according to them, they don’t participate in a lot of races. From what one could gather, speaking to elite athletes, right now there is no national camp for the marathon. Those from the army train at the ASI in Pune, Sports Authority of India (SAI) in Bengaluru and at camps managed by themselves in Ooty. There is a foreign coach at the ASI. And for those additionally supported by private sports agencies, there is the scope to participate in races overseas or train overseas provided the acceptance abroad and the paperwork for the same are readied by the athlete. Second, the athletes feel they can’t be blamed for a marathon ecosystem, which features prize money. Even the international marathon ecosystem has races with prize money and many of the star athletes finishing high in the Olympics take part in these races.
From what this blog could decipher based on its conversations with elite athletes and its reservoir of conversations with civilian runners and those involved with the Indian running ecosystem, there are probably two areas requiring attention to get the marathon in India back on its feet. First, there is merit in the interest shown in the middle to early long distances. These largely track distances have served globally as the cradle from which, talent for the longer distances emerge. Further, one of the complaints often heard from elite Indian athletes running the 42.195, is of them doing well till the mid-30 kilometres or so and then finding it hard to sustain the targeted pace. They don’t seem to have figured out yet why this is happening and they have looked at inputs ranging from diet to strength training and mileage. This likely underscores the potential in the middle to early long distances and up to the half marathon; it also shows work still to be done in the 42.195. As one elite runner pointed out, “ it is tempting to ascribe our weakness to genetics but look at Japan – they may not be winning the medals at elite races but they have more people capable of timings less than two hours and 15 minutes in the marathon than India does. So, there can be no excuses.’’ It speaks something about running ecosystems overseas and the need to examine their Indian equivalent to know where we are getting it wrong. This is the second of the two areas for study mentioned earlier – the ecosystem.
The number of road races have been slowly growing in India. According to Venkatraman Pichumani of RaceMart, India now hosts almost 2000 road races every year. Thanks mainly to them, the number of recreational runners has risen manifold. Elite runners participate in a few of these events. The vast majority of these races is powered by civilian runners, including those from their ranks who run well. A couple of aspects mark this category as different from the elites. The typical elite athlete – reference herein being to those from the army – trains twice a day; in the morning and in the evening. Given they are army personnel, they enjoy consistent salary even if their job is to dedicate themselves to sports. The reality of amateurs is different. Most of them work at regular jobs, which are rarely empathetic to pursuits irrelevant to given line of work. Training twice a day can be difficult both for want of time and want of official acceptance. Amateurs train on their own. Some of them train with civilian coaches who have had a long tenure in distance running either as civilian athletes or athletes in the military. This blog has come across coaches with promising wards who wish there was some means by which, the talent they groomed as best as they could, may be helped along to the next level of training with marathon elites. Such link is not easily found. In principle, civilians in big cities and big states are better off in establishing these connections because they live in locales with systems in place. Even then, linking to elite camps is tough. When you hail from less economically developed circumstances, the chances are dismal. A woman marathon runner, who hails from a comparatively remote region and represented India once, said that for her event abroad she trained alone. On the other hand, training in a group is an integral part of the marathon. The reason, as a leading civilian coach explained, is simple – the chore of maintaining a targeted pace for long or piling on mileage becomes less boring. Right now, in India, the best marathon runners appear to be in two distinct camps. The military runners train in their own group. The best civilian runners train on their own. Civilians also don’t seem to be in groups of equally competent runners as in the army. Not just that – when you don’t know what fetches the establishment’s attention, you end up running several events hoping somebody will notice you and recommend you for higher levels of training. Of the earlier mentioned woman marathoner, her coach said, “ she ran and ran and they kept saying the timing wasn’t good enough. How would she improve her timing when where she hailed from had no modern training facility at that point in time?’’ Indications are – it is time we broke this pattern.
In spite of the limitations they face, civilian athletes from India have improved their performance. Slowly, there is a pool of talent beginning to develop just this side and that of the two hours, 20 minutes-mark in the men’s marathon. Yet strangely, one couldn’t find in the marathon circuit, any talk of training camps – virtual or real – that brought together the best of civilians and the best from the army. No drift towards a larger pool of talent focused on the simplest of challenges to improve India’s performance in the marathon – taking down that longstanding national record. To give one example: in a training camp featuring the best from both army and civilian backdrops, athletes get an opportunity to learn from each other. This is however easier said than done. First, the army runners are far ahead in terms of timing. Second, in India the civilian-military divide is such that shared spaces are rare. Still, at least one elite athlete this blog spoke to said that provided discipline and focus are maintained in the spaces shared, athletes of high calibre, irrespective of their background, will always be useful as partners to train with and maintain a targeted pace. Doing so, people get pushed; everyone learns. The pool for selectors to pick from, grows. This blog spoke to a civilian runner with personal best in the range of two hours, 18 minutes in the marathon for his view. Years ago, as a 10,000m runner, he had the good fortune of being in the national camp and training with elites from the military. As a marathoner, despite good timing by Indian civilian standards, he hasn’t been called for any national camp. “ It is not easy. On the other hand, ten good athletes training together will produce one or two who will inch closer to 2:12:00. It will take some time, but it will happen,’’ he said. Former national level marathoner and Mumbai-based coach, Savio D’Souza, recalled this compartmentalized life wasn’t the case earlier. “ In 1986, I was at the national camp in Patiala training for the marathon along with runners from the military,’’ he said.
An easy way to facilitate a convergent atmosphere, at least occasionally, without talking of training camps, is to hold periodic trials that bring together the best from military and civilians. An invite to such trials would be treasured; civilians would see it as an honour. When this blog asked the earlier mentioned sport administrator whether officialdom favoured dedicated Olympic trials in the marathon where the best from the army and civilian ranks participated, the reply was: one can already do that in any of the annual editions of the Mumbai Marathon or the National Marathon held in Delhi. The reply amazed because neither of these events are spoken of by runners as having a course or weather conditions ideal for record breaking performance. And this is without mentioning the fact that civic authorities in India are yet to grasp how much of a difference good roads make to popularizing a road running event (a societal wish to respect running and love the fact that one’s city has a marathon, eludes India). On the other hand, trials to select runners for major events can be anywhere having a good course, conducive weather conditions and the capacity to support a race at a given point in time. It can be offered by the establishment as an additional option to qualify, not to mention – allow for a fraternity of elite athletes driven by sport and not separated by walls. Still, to be fair, can one convincingly counter what the senior sport administrator said? The answer is no. And that is because elite athletes from overseas, running at Indian events, have shown repeatedly that timings better than what Indian elites deliver is possible. Timings better than the Indian national record, have been achieved in Mumbai and Delhi.
One way out of this situation may be to dig deeper on the private participation front. Government authorities are justified in being disappointed that they do all the grassroot unearthing of talent (it is hard work). In their eyes, private players do the easier quarter of working with the best. That is by and large, a fair observation. But it also has to be admitted that the running ecosystem in India wouldn’t have grown this big had it not been for private participation. All those 2000 odd road races exist because there are private sponsors willing to support. One of the biggest Indian sponsors of road races -Tata via group company, TCS – is also possibly the biggest internationally with a clutch of prominent road races across a few continents supported by said company. However, as yet in India, there is no professional road running team supported by any company, that one has heard of. Should that happen, it is likely that a deeper exploration of training methods, training locales, identifying the best talent (irrespective of civilian and military distinction) and establishment of more training facilities (the sort oriented towards long distance running) would happen. Athletes have simple demands. One elite athlete wondered if there could be a training locale that was 6000 feet in elevation but was also a plateau with space for long training loops without too many ups and downs. An ideal training spot should have access to both tarmac and mud track. These are details that the private sector should be able to address. What one should however make sure is that money does not overplay its hand.
A concern in private participation in sports and creative pursuits is how the engagement between these human activities and the pressure to make monetary sense, plays out. For example, imagination by money and media typically favor short duration races and sports that deliver quick results. It is a quest to gratify the impatient human being. The world of ultramarathons knows this well. When it came to pitching for a ticket to the Olympics, they had to showcase their shortest distance and also make it trail in the hope that scenic backdrops would sustain broadcasters’ interests. That mission is still on. Or remember this more biting angle – heavy traffic and pollution, which are among the problems runners out on their daily jogs (and cyclists out on their daily rides) face, are partly a private sector gift. You can blame it on gullible customers but let’s not forget – manufacturers have gleefully crammed our environment with vehicles using this incentive and that. It is great sales but hardly great for quality of life, those daily runs included. It is why imagination by money matters but only to a point. It is why CSR, designed to improve how companies are perceived, can never convince as well as genuine change. Nothing like a change in our minds. Transposed to running it means – no matter whichever external constituency agrees to pitch in and assist, the desire to take the marathon in India to greater heights has to come from the collective of runners. The solution will have to be one that maintains interest in the sport in a sustained fashion but banks equally on empathy for it by government, support from the private sector and a culture that wants long distance running to continue and grow in Indian life. That last bit is where the average recreational runner becomes important. He / she forms the biggest component in the ecosystem; the passion which keeps running alive. Do we want marathoners from India to be world class? Will we set the best in our midst, up for greater success?
The late Shivnath Singh’s 2:12:00 may be a mere set of numbers on the clock. But trying to get past it and improve further, shows us so much about how we let ourselves down and as much about what we can do.
(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)
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