Having recently smashed Indian athletics` longest-standing national record, marathon runner Sawan Barwal has set another goal: winning the country`s first medal in the Asian Games since 1982 in the gruelling distance. India`s last Asian Games medal in marathon was won by Hosur Kukkappa Seetharan at the 1982 Games in New Delhi. Before that, Chota Singh won a gold in the inaugural 1951 Asian Games in the national capital.
The legendary Shivnath Singh had held the national marathon record of 2:12:00 for 48 years. However, on Sunday, the 28-year-old Barwal broke that long-standing mark at the NN Rotterdam Marathon, finishing 20th with a new time of 2:11:58. “This year, my main target will be Asian Games and I want to win a medal there. I will not participate in too many events,” Barwal told PTI in an interview facilitated by Reliance Foundation.
“I feel I can further improve my national record. I could have run around 2:10:00 even in Rotterdam had there been no cold wind. So, I can run faster than my current national record. “Next year, there is Asian Marathon Championship. Then I would want to give my best in the 2028 Olympics.” Barwal, who is getting married next month, broke the national record in his debut race but said he was confident of achieving the feat as he had been preparing for that race since January. He was to run in the Valencia Marathon on December last year but an injury led to him missing it.
“I was undergoing high altitude training at Coonoor and I was preparing well. I was confident of breaking the national record. “The target was to run 2:10:00 and everything went according to the plan till the 40km mark. In the last two kilometers there were issues. I did not anticipate the cold wind and moreover, I had poured water on my body,” he explained.
He fell down twice â¿¿ at around the 100m mark from the finish line and again just 10â¿¿20m before it. “I had a blackout of may be 10 to 15 seconds but a volunteer came and helped me in standing up. Then I pulled through the finish line,” he reminisced. “Rotterdam was a flat track except for little up and down at the end with a bridge in the middle. The climate was also good. The highest temperature was 12 degrees.”
His coach at Reliance Foundation, Ajith Markose said Barwal may run a couple of races — either 5000m or 10000m — later in the season but his main focus will be to win an Asian Games marathon medal. “He is a part of our (Reliance Foundation) Project 2:09 marathon programme. The target this year is the Asian Games marathon medal. Moreover, he is getting married next year,” Markose said.
“He will be chasing the medal in the Asian Games, he will not be chasing for (better) time in Japan.” The coach said he knew that Barwal would do wonders as soon as he joined the programme in 2022. “When he joined our 2:09 programme in 2022, we did physiology test like VO2max test, and we found that his VO2max was very high, 78-79 ml per kg. That`s the amount of oxygen that he can utilize. That time, without much training, he was able to reach that level. So we knew that he will be very good at long distance and marathon or half marathon “So last few years we have been preparing him for marathon only.”
A volunteer helped Barwal to stand up
Markose said Barwal was running according to plan up to 40 km, but, after that, cold wind struck him and his head got numb. “I was following him in a metro because the route was little weird. Most of the marathon routes will be a loop, I can catch them again at 20km by just crossing the road. It was not like that so I had to follow them in a metro. I went to 20km then I got another metro to reach 30km mark. Then I came to the finish line.
“I was 100m away from finish line and I was ready to take his pictures and videos. We were sure that he is going to break the national record. When the electronic time showed 2:10:00, I couldn`t see him at the finish line. He was at that time just around 100m from the finish line. And when I saw him, I realised that he is going to fall down.
“He fell down but he managed to stand up and run. And again, within 10-20m (of the finish line), he fell down. He was completely out. Luckily there was a volunteer who made him stand. And somehow he crossed the finish line just few seconds within the national record.”
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