Awarded the Gold Category status 2008 onwards — hence offering local runners a home turf to qualifify for the Olympics, the Mumbai Marathon assumes importance for the bunch of Indian runners. “There is no pressure as such, but we are very serious about clinching a qualification,” says Services’ distance running coach KS Matthews, happy to be part of the third-Sunday event, but urging his runners to stay focussed on that magic figure.

Army Sports Institute (ASI) psychologists are hard at work, this moment, trying to organise the single-minded temperament of the Services runners — all on the radar after their sub-2:20 runs in the last season. Satya Prakash did 2:17.53 at Delhi a fortnight ago, Ram Singh Yadav clocked 2:18:22 at Allahabad and Benning recorded an ego-boosting (though unratified at Guwahati) 2:17.32 at the last National Games, giving the trio the confidence to stop the watch at the desired ticker. ASI’s ambitiously-started ‘Mission Olympics’ faces its litmus test amid Mumbai’s colour and vigour.

“Mumbai is home turf, and I’d like to achieve my qualification here. What better place than this to take the first step to the Olympics,” says 22-year-old Benning, a precocious find for long-distance from Shillong, also the youngest in contention. This Havaldar in the Army, a surprise half-marathon winner at Switzerland after tilling land on the hills of Meghalaya, believes it’ll be a rare qualification event in India, watched and cheered on by thousands. “I expect Mumbai to push me,” he adds.

Rare also, since no Indian marathon runner has been to the Olympics since 1980. It was another Services stalwart Shivnath Singh who travelled to Montreal in 1976 (finishing a creditable 11th) and four years later in Moscow.

The late Shivnath Singh’s 2:11.59 amended to 2:12 still stands as India’s best, and his successors in uniform fancy an encore.

For the two others — Ram Singh Yadav and Satya Prakash, now in their thirties — Mumbai is an opportune moment to book the Big-O berth, as India aim at the B Standard qualification time of 2:18 (A Standard is 2:15). “Olympic champs can be 35-36, but the two realise that Mumbai will be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fulfill a dream that their rural backgrounds wouldn’t have offered them a decade ago,” says Matthews, highlighting the importance of the big run.

Hong Kong, later in the year, provides the final qualification chance, but Mumbai will feel more at home. No wonder, Mumbai’s temperature-updates thrice a day — at 8 am, 9 am and 10 am — are relayed everyday to Pune, where the jawans wait for Big Sunday.