Legends
never die ! .. they leave ever-lasting
imprints !!
Day 1 of World Test
Championship at Southampton was washed out – many of us are following .. ..
other than Cricketers, not many sportpersons have garnered Nation’s awe and
attention.
One great
man, an Army man, a track legend, and a
trailblazer who demanded excellence from all those who represented India, is no
more ! — Milkha Singh passed away from COVID-19 complications yesterday. Missing what could have been India’s
greatest track and field medal — a bronze at the Rome Olympics in 1960 by 0.1
seconds — independent India’s first sporting superstar taught a nation entering
its teens what a heartbreak felt like.
Captain Milkha Singh (20
November 1929 – 18 June 2021), is the only athlete to win gold in 400 metres
race at the Asian Games as well the Commonwealth Games. He also won gold medals
in the 1958 and 1962 Asian Games. He represented India in the 1956 Summer
Olympics in Melbourne, the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome and the 1964 Summer
Olympics in Tokyo. He was awarded the Padma Shri, in recognition of his
sporting achievements.
The race best remembered is his fourth-place finish
in the 400 metres final at the 1960 Olympic Games, which he had entered as one
of the favourites. Various records were broken in the race, which required a
photo-finish and saw American Otis Davis being declared the winner by
one-hundredth of a second over German Carl Kaufmann. Singh's fourth-place time
of 45.73 seconds was the Indian national record for almost 40 years.
The title
‘Flying Sikh’ was accorded from a totally different quarter. The then Pakistan
President, Ayub Khan, had invited Indian athletes for an Indo-Pak sports meet
in Lahore.
It was the
Asian Games, where Milkha announced his arrival at the international stage.
Milkha first ran in 1958 Tokyo games, where he won gold in 200 meters. He ran
the race in 21.6 seconds to win the title. Winning the medal was also sweeter
as Milkha defeated Pakistan’s Abdul Khaliq in the final. In 1958, when Milkha
Singh first participated in the games, Abdul Khaliq was Asia’s fastest runner
in the 100-meter event. This was the first time when Milkha and Khaliq met each
other and from there on the rivalry between both the athletes started to gain
momentum. Milkha went onto win gold in
400m too. When the race started, Milkha
and Khaliq were running neck to neck in the first 100m, but it was Milkha who
overtook Khaliq in the final stretch to win the gold, but the final decision
came after a long delay by the judges. Milkha Singh who spoke about the
incident in his book ‘The Race of my life’ said that both of them had eyes on
each other and the race was so close that anyone could have won it. Just before
the finish line, there was a muscle pull in Milkha’s right leg, but he still
ran and fell on the finishing line in pain and at that very moment Khaliq also
crossed the finish line. The judges watch the picture from a various angle
before declaring Milkha the winner. By doing this Milkha became the second
athlete to win gold in 200m. Milkha registered a timing of 21.6 seconds, while
Khaliq took 21.7sec to finish the race.
After the
thriller at Asian Games, Milkha and Khaliq rivalry got more intense as people
from India and Pakistan both enjoyed the clash between both athletes. In 1960
Milkha went onto beat Khaliq in Lahore after which Pakistan’s interim Prime
Minister field marshal Ayub Khan gave him the name Flying Sikh’.
Milkha Singh was born on
20 November 1929 at Govindpura, a village 10 km (6.25 mi) from Muzaffargarh
city in Punjab Province, British India (now Muzaffargarh District, Pakistan).
He was one of 15 siblings, eight of whom died before the Partition of india. He
was orphaned during the Partition when his parents, a brother and two sisters
were killed by Muslim mobs in the violence that ensued. He witnessed these
killings ! Escaping the troubles in
Punjab, where killings of Hindus and Sikhs were continuing, by moving to Delhi. He joined Indian army and while stationed at the Electrical Mechanical
Engineering Centre in Secunderabad he was introduced to athletics.
Before Vikas Gowda won the
gold in 2014, Milkha was the only Indian male to have won an individual
athletics gold medal at those Games. At the 1962 Asian Games, held in Jakarta,
Singh won gold in the 400m and in the 4
x 400m relay.
All of Singh's medals were
donated to the nation. They were displayed at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in
New Delhi and later moved to a sports museum in Patiala, where a pair of running shoes that he wore in
Rome are also displayed. Milkha Singh
was admitted to the intensive care unit at Fortis Hospital in Mohali on 24 May
2021 with pneumonia caused by COVID-19. His condition was, for a while,
described as stable, but he died on 18 June 2021 at 11:30 PM IST. Sad that his wife,
Nirmal Kaur, had died a few days earlier on 13 June 2021, also due to COVID-19.
19th June 2021.
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