Delhi half marathon: Gopi Thonakkal returns to the race where it all began

Defending champion at the Delhi half marathon, Nitendra Singh Rawat is confident that he can repeat the feat on Sunday. But there is one problem. India’s most consistently improving marathon runner Gopi Thonakkal will be in the field.

Originally a track athlete for 10000 metres, Gopi first competed in a full marathon in 2016 but since then, he has been India’s leader in the long race. He competed at his first half marathon in Delhi and was trying to follow his senior.

Three years later, Gopi is back in the capital for his second half marathon. Things have changed for the 30-year-old since 2015. He is now an Olympian, the best in Asia after becoming the first Indian man to win the Asian Marathon Championships in 2017 and no longer the pace-setter.

“I did the pace setting before Rio and it was one time. They were all senior to me and our coach told us. At Mumbai marathon 2016, I was setting pace for Rawat and Kheta Ram,” Gopi says.

That Mumbai race was also the first marathon of his career. To everyone’s surprise, he completed the race in 2 hours 16:15 minutes to finish 11th. Thus began his long distance career.

He competed at the Rio Olympics and finished 25th, with a personal best timing of 2:15:75. He became the Asia champion in 2017 and is now in Delhi to prepare for the upcoming season which will have Asian Championships and World Championships.

“This half marathon is like a practice for bigger events. It helps us get ready and improve ourselves. But the main target will be the Mumbai marathon which will be a qualifying for Worlds,” he says.

But he knows that even though Rawat has had a loss of form and is still trying to break back into the Indian team, it won’t be an easy race on Sunday. While Gopi’s career has only ascended after the Rio Olympics, Rawat’s has taken an opposite path.

In Rio, Rawat had pulled both his hamstrings and he clocked 2 hours 22:52 minutes, a setback after promising so much in the year leading up to the Olympics. He was not included in the national camp which forced him to shift his base back to Army training centre in Ranikhet.

Rawat went to Bangalore to rehab and stay on rent to compete with the Indian team. Soon, he would return to Ranikhet.

“In army, most of them are cross-country runners and are not my level. I was running marathons in hilly area but it’s difficult to motivate yourself to run alone. It’s a marathon,” Rawat says. “I missed my group. In national camp, we were around 10-12 runners trying to be better than the other and we had a great group. Gopi, Kheta Ram, me, Yunous and Lakhsman was trying with us. They were competitors trying to out perform each other. That time I realised the importance of a group.”

Though he won the half marathon last year in Delhi with a course record, Rawat was competing against a depleted field. Govindan Lakshmanan, a 10000m distance runner, almost pulled off the race before Rawat sprinted in the final 200m and dipped his shoulder before Lakshmanan finished.

With Gopi back in the hunt, it will be a tough race for Rawat who is still trying to find his way back into the Indian team. Both runners, however, agree that India needs a better of marathon runners.

“We need some elite marathon runners with us to train. Now Rawat is in Ranikhet and I am in Bangalore so I don’t know how is his practice or what kind of preparations he has actually done. I cannot help him in any manner,” Gopi says.

Rawat too agrees: “We had a group of long distance runners for six-seven years. We would practice with each other and competed against each other to better ourselves. That is gone. Our bases have shifted and there is no group anymore.”

Despite all the changes, both runners are confident of a top-10 finish and know that a good timing here will be an ideal start to the season. Rawat acknowledges the fact that Gopi will be the favourite and he won’t think too much about any tags.

“He has improved a lot and there is a healthy competition which I need. I have run only two international races. He has more. But we will see on Sunday,” Rawat says.