Milkha Singh
(born October 17, 1935, Lyallpur [now Faisalabad], Pakistan?died June 18, 2021,
Chandigarh
, India) was an Indian
track-and-field
athlete who became the first Indian male to reach the final of an Olympic athletics event when he placed fourth in the 400-metre race at the
1960 Olympic Games in Rome
.
Orphaned
during the partition of
India
, Singh moved to India from
Pakistan
in 1947. He eked out a living by working in a roadside restaurant before joining the Indian army. It was in the army that Singh realized his abilities as a sprinter. After winning the national trials in the 200-metre and 400-metre sprints, he was eliminated during the preliminary heats for those events at the
1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne
.
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At the 1958
Asian Games
, Singh won both the 200-metre and 400-metre races. Later that year he captured the 400-metre gold at the
Commonwealth Games
, which was India’s first athletics gold in the history of the Games. He narrowly lost the bronze medal in the 400 metres at the 1960
Olympic Games
in Rome, missing out on third place in a photo finish. Singh retained his 400-metre gold at the 1962 Asian Games and also took another gold as part of India’s 4 × 400-metre
relay
team. He made a final Olympic appearance at the
1964 Tokyo Games
as part of the national 4 × 400 team that failed to advance past preliminary heats.
Singh was awarded the Padma Shri (one of India’s highest civilian honours) in 1959. After his retirement he served as the director of sports in
Punjab
. Singh’s autobiography,
The Race of My Life
(cowritten with his daughter Sonia Sanwalka), was published in 2013.