MUMBAI: When the top Indian athletes stand at the start line of the Tata Mumbai Marathon on Sunday, they will have the Asian Games qualifying in mind more than victory.
The target is to return a time of less than 2. 15 for the 42. 2km distance, giving the athlete the ticket to the Asiad in Hanzhou in the last week of September.
Both Srinu Bugatha, the defending champion, and 2018 winner Gopi Thonakkal, will look to maintain a pace of 3. 10 minutes per kilometre for the journey.
Bugatha has run just 80 seconds slower than Gopi's all-time best timing of 2. 13. 39.
Bugatha is very clear about his goal. He wants to qualify and his best (2. 14. 59) is only a second faster than the Asiad qualifying time. So if he is feeling a tad nervous, it is understandable.
Gopi, on the other hand, would be nervous for completely different reasons. He has not raced in three years. "I have been in training for some months after recovering from a hamstring injury. I am glad to get to train again. I am able to maintain the pace in training but a race is different beast altogether. One has to respond to change of pace from fellow athletes and that's where the game is different," Gopi explained.
Gopi came very close to breaking the national record (2:12 set by Shivnath Singh in 1978) in 2019 in Seoul. He hopes to hit that form again but until he gets a race in his bag after this break, he does not want to think of national records.
"My focus is to qualify. Once that is achieved, I willshift the focus to Seoul in mid March when we get to challenge the national mark. Mumbai is a difficult course to try and attempt the feat," said Gopi.
Four-time winner, Sudha Singh has exactly the same thought process and that's why her focus is to just win the race for the fifth time. Nothing else. There is hardly any competition for her, unless of course, she suffers a breakdown due to an injury.
"If I run a bad race in an attempt to break the national mark, you journalists will write that I busted my race," said the 36 year old. But for her, the more realistic reason is that in Mumbai, the weather tends to get a little warm by the end of the race to push the pace. She wants to target a victory on Sunday and then try and achieve greatness later in the year, at venues where the weather will support her endeavour. Sudha will just race against the elements and the course.
