Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
On May 28, 1958, Milkha Singh won India its first gold medal in a track and field event, sprinting through 400 meters at the Asian Games in Tokyo in 47 seconds flat. The next day, he turned it into a double triumph, finishing the 200-meter race in 21.6 seconds for another gold.
Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
Less than two months later, on July 24, he performed the commendable feat of picking up India’s first Commonwealth Games gold. Those who witnessed the talent of the young athlete, also a Sikh refugee turned army sepoy, concluded he did not just run, he flew.
Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
Picking up pace
Running had an important role in Singh’s childhood. He was born into a farming family in a village in Muzaffargarh district, now in Pakistan. To beat the heat on the long walk to his school, he would race from the shade of one tree to another.
Later, in the violence that accompanied India’s Partition, Singh’s father urged him to run away. Members of Singh’s family, including his father, were slain in front of him during the riots.
A few years after escaping to India, he was recruited to the army as sepoy in 1952. There, as Singh ran six miles for a promised glass of milk, his instructors and colleagues discovered just how fast the young man’s legs could carry him.
With regular training and numerous sports meets, he frequently excelled in the 400-meter run, running barefoot for about three years.
In 1956, he qualified for the National Games, where he was picked to train for the 1956 Australia Olympics. By this time, he had switched to spikes.
He performed poorly in his first Olympic outing and resolved to be a “running machine” to succeed internationally. “Running became my God, my religion, and my beloved,” he wrote in his autobiography, The Race of My Life, published in 2013.
By 1957, he transformed his career into a series of victories that set records in India and Asia. He was the country’s best medal hope.
Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
Coaching the star
Singh’s career was shaped by a number of coaches. Among them were Gurdev Singh, who trained him in the army, and Baldev Singh, who mentored him in the national camps. Ranbir Singh and Dronacharya awardee J S Saini coached him too. But his most chronicled coach is Arthur W Howard.
The American, from the United Mathadeus Church Mission Programme, arrived in India in 1945 and led Indian athletics coaching from 1948 to 1960. He taught Singh an advanced technique of taking a start.
“When I first saw Milkha, I knew this guy had it in him to succeed at the international level. One thing I noticed at that time was the amount of practice he would put in,” Howard said in an interview.
Howard famously gave him a strategy to outrun South Africa’s Malcolm Spence at the Commonwealth Games: Go full speed even in the first 300 meters so that he does the same, although that is not his strategy. “It was because of Dr. Howard’s motivation that I won the gold at Cardiff,” Singh later wrote.
Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
Asian Games
Singh had his early big international wins, the 400-meter and 200-meter races, at this tournament. The Asian Games was still a new concept, launched in 1951 as an effort to galvanize the newly independent Asian nations. Singh’s wins in 1958 gave a fillip to the country’s sporting culture.
Commonwealth Games
The same year Singh became the first from the country to win at what was then called the British Empire and Commonwealth Games, soaring past rivals from a difficult position in an outside lane.
Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
“When I won, the reaction was unbelievable. There were stories about a village man running barefoot, an athlete who doesn't know how to spell ‘athletics’, how such a runner beat the world’s best.”
The feats that followed
While he did not end up on the podium, Singh finished fourth in the Rome Olympics of 1960. His time of 45.73 seconds set a national record which was not broken for 38 years. The same year he was invited to race in Pakistan, where he beat the favorite Khaliq in the 200-meter race and got nicknamed ‘Flying Sikh’ by General Ayub Khan. In the 1962 Asian Games, he repeated the double win of gold medals.
Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
Beyond the finish line
Singh donated all his gold medals to the country. He married Nirmal, a former captain of the Indian women’s volleyball team. Of his four children, son Jeev Milkha Singh took to sports, as a professional golfer.
Of his achievements, the sprinter concluded:
“I won competitions and medals, except for the elusive Olympic gold, which I will always regret, and yet I have always been content because I kept trying.”
Gold medal win for Milkha Singh at the Asian Games in Tokyo by Aaryama Somyaji
In 2021, he passed away at 91 after a bout of Covid-19. His sporting legacy still flies high.
Illustrations by Aaryama Somayaji