The Flying Sikh

The track in Rome was hot and hard under the September sun. Six men crouched at their marks for the final of the 400 metres at the 1960 Olympic Games. In one lane was a tall young soldier from India, with his long hair tied up under a small cloth on his head.

Most people in the stadium had never heard of India winning anything on a running track. Milkha Singh had come to change that.

To understand what that race meant, you have to go back to a village in the Punjab, many years earlier.

A village, and then no village

Milkha Singh was born in Govindpura, a farming village in the western Punjab, in what was then British India. Even he was not completely sure of the exact date, as birth records in villages were often not kept. He was one of many children in a poor farming family. He herded animals, walked a long way to school, and ran barefoot along the dusty paths.

In 1947, British rule ended and the land was divided into two new countries, India and Pakistan. This was the Partition. His village fell on the Pakistani side. In the terrible violence of those months, many families were torn apart. Milkha's was one of them. He lost his parents and several of his brothers and sisters.

He was a teenager, alone, and frightened. He made his way to India, to Delhi, on a refugee train.

In Delhi, Milkha lived for a time in refugee camps. Later he stayed with his married sister, Isher, who became one of the most important people in his life. There was very little money and very little to do. He drifted. In his autobiography he writes honestly about how lost he felt in those years, and how close he came to taking the wrong road.

One of his brothers suggested that he join the Indian Army. He tried and was turned down. He tried again, and was turned down again. He kept applying, and in the early 1950s he was finally accepted.

The army gave him regular meals, a uniform and something he had not had for years: order.

A glass of milk

Soon after he joined, his unit held a long cross-country race. The young recruits were told that the top runners would get extra rations, including a glass of milk every day. For a boy who had known real hunger, that was reason enough to run.

He finished near the front. His officers noticed him, and he was picked for special training in athletics.

Milkha trained the way he had survived: with everything he had. He ran in heat, in rain, on hard ground and up hills. He later told how he would sometimes run until he collapsed, and then get up and run again. He had almost no idea about technique or diet. He simply worked harder than anyone else around him.

At his first Olympic Games, in Melbourne in 1956, he did not get past the early heats. But he did something wise. He went up to the American runner who won the 400 metres there, Charles Jenkins, and asked him how he trained. He came home with a head full of new ideas and a promise to himself.

Gold for India

In 1958, Milkha Singh won the 200 metres and the 400 metres at the Asian Games in Tokyo. That same year, at the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, in Wales, he won the 440 yards. It was the first gold medal in athletics at those Games for independent India.

People in India were overjoyed. The Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, asked what reward he would like. Milkha asked for a national holiday, and a day was given so that the whole country could share in his joy.

In 1960 he was invited to race in Lahore, in Pakistan, against the great Pakistani sprinter Abdul Khaliq. Going back across the border, to the land where his family had died, was painful for him, and at first he did not want to go. He went, and he won. The story goes that the President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, praised him as the "Flying Sikh". The name stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Fourth by a breath

Which brings us back to Rome. Milkha Singh was in the form of his life. In the final he went out very fast. Then, as he told it later, he felt he had gone too hard, eased very slightly, and glanced across at the other runners.

That tiny moment was enough. Four men crossed the line in a blur, and when the results came, Milkha was fourth, by a fraction of a second. His time was a new Indian national record, and it stood for decades. But he had missed a medal.

He said for the rest of his life that it was the race he could never forget. He also said that he hoped, before he died, to see an Indian win an Olympic gold medal on the track.

The race goes on

Milkha Singh married Nirmal Kaur, who had captained the Indian women's volleyball team. They raised their children in Chandigarh, and their son, Jeev, became an international golfer. Milkha worked for many years to encourage young athletes, and he was honoured with the Padma Shri.

When a film was made about his life, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, he was widely reported to have accepted just one rupee for the rights, and asked that the money help sportspeople in need.

He died in June 2021, a few days after his wife. Less than two months later, the javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra won India's first Olympic gold medal in athletics, and dedicated it to him.

The boy from Govindpura did not live to see that medal. But in a way, he had been running towards it all his life.

Want to read more?

Milkha Singh told his own story, with his daughter Sonia Sanwalka, in The Race of My Life. His results and Olympic record are listed on Olympics.com, the official site of the International Olympic Committee.