Avinash Sable, the national record holder in the 3000m steeplechase, finished ninth in Friday’s season-ending Diamond League final in a performance that was below average.

Sable, who celebrated his 30th birthday on Friday, finished ninth in the 10-man field in his first-ever DL final with a time of 8 minutes and 17.09 seconds.

With a time of 8:06.90, Amos Serem of Kenya won the Diamond League, and Soufiane El Bakkali of Morocco, the current Olympic and world champion, came in second in the season-ending competition.

Third place went to Tunisian Mohamed Amin Jhinaoui (8:09.68).

Neeraj Chopra, a javelin thrower who won a silver medal at the Paris Olympics, will compete on Saturday.

Sable’s performance of 8:14.18 placed her eleventh in the Paris Olympic Games.

After two meetings, he had three points and placed fourteenth overall in the Diamond League rankings. However, four competitors who were placed higher than him—Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma (injured), New Zealand’s Geordie Beamish, Japan’s Ryuji Mura, and the United States’ Hillary Bor—withdrew, enabling him to just make the top 10 cutoff.

Men’s 3000m steeplechase was a feature of five of the 14 DL series events held this season around the globe.

The reigning Asian Games champion Sable had improved on his previous best performance to finish sixth in the Diamond League’s Paris leg on July 7 with a national record time of 8:09.91. On August 25, he finished 14th in the Silesia leg with a timing of 8:29.96.

A ‘Diamond Trophy’, USD 30,000 in prize money, and a wild card into the World Athletics Championships are given to the winners of the Diamond League season finale.