Avinash Sable can be the best in world: Steeplechase legend Ezekiel Kemboi

NEW DELHI: Kenyan steeplechase legend Ezekiel Kemboi has an offer for Avinash Sable, that the Indian just cannot refuse.
The 42-year-old, winner of two Olympic gold (2004 Athens and 2012 London) and four world titles, wants India’s premier steeplechaser to train alongside him in Kenya to improve his endurance skills. “If he can just come to Kenya for two or three months, we can make him do some endurance training. It will benefit him a lot,” Kemboi told TOI.
“It will add more power to his running. We have the best high altitudes for training,” added the man from the country considered the school of long-distance running, where he says, “everybody wants to run”.
On his third visit to India – Kemboi won silver at the Delhi CWG 2010 and ran a half-marathon here some years later – the Kenyan seemed impressed with Sable’s progress.
“I have seen Sable at the Birmingham CWG in 2022. He won a silver there. I have said it before, he is very good as a steeplechaser. If he gets the right training and coaching, he can be the best in the world. He has the confidence in him to become a world-class athlete,” Kemboi said of the 30-year-old.
Winner of the steeplechase gold and 5,000m silver at the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023, Sable was introduced to cross-country running in 2015, and in nine years since, has broken the steeplechase national record seven consecutive times.
Kemboi, who has taken up coaching back home, also shared his thoughts on the doping scandal which hit Kenyan athletics in recent times. “A lot of junior athletes are being lured and lied to. Doping is a menace. My request has always been to run clean, win clean. I just want to request every senior and junior athlete to stay away from doping. Run clean and win easy, is what I always say,” he said.