Perhaps the most enduring imagery and memory about Milkha Singh are the events that unfolded in less than a minute on a balmy Tuesday afternoon in Rome on September 6, 1960, when the temperature was a pleasant 25.5 degrees Celsius and humidity 54%. At 3:45 pm local time, as Singh took guard, he would scarcely have known how, in a little over 45 seconds, his life would be irreversibly changed.
What exactly happened in those 45.6 seconds – which wasn’t just Singh’s personal best time for 400 m and better than the then existing Olympic record, set in 1952 Helsinki Olympics, of 45.9 seconds but also a national record for India for 38 years – will be known only to Singh, who was leading the six-men pack till the 250 m mark.
While there are varied accounts of what happened – from Singh looking over his shoulder at the runners behind him to thinking that he was running too fast and hence should slow down – what’s not in dispute is that Singh, who passed away late on Friday night at the age of 91 due to post-Covid complications, lost out on a podium finish by 0.1 second. His death follows just five days after his wife Nirmal Kaur passed away due to Covid-19.
But Singh’s triumphs didn’t just lay on the cinder tracks that he scorched with his blistering pace – his victory over life’s adversities was no less than a triumph. Born in Pakistan’s Muzaffargarh district, in Kot Addu tehsil, which is about 100km from Multan in Pakistan’s Punjab, Singh’s life was impacted by the horrors of partition when his parents were killed in front of him.
Escaping to Delhi, where a railway platform served as his home for a month, Singh’s achievements included four Asian Games gold medals – two in the 1958 Tokyo Games in the 200 m and 400 m with another two in 1962 Jakarta Games for 400 m and 4×400 m – as well as a Commonwealth Games gold medal in 1958, Cardiff, in the 440 yard dash.
Perhaps the best tribute to Singh’s athletic feats came from Pakistan – a country of which he had no pleasant memories – when then Pakistan President General Ayub Khan said to him after Singh beat Pakistani sprinter Abdul Khaliq in 1960: “You didn’t run today, you flew”. The moniker ‘Flying Sikh’ stuck from then on.