Centenarian marathon runner Fauja Singh.
Vincent Yu/AP
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Vincent Yu/AP
In London within the winter of 1999, operating coach Harmandar Singh took on a brand new scholar who was older than his father.
Fauja Singh was 89, skinny as a reed, and had a scraggy beard that almost reached his chest. For his or her first marathon coaching session that November morning, he had turned up in a three-piece swimsuit.
“I kind of needed to inform him that if he was operating down the street sporting a three-piece swimsuit, there’s a chance that the police will say, what are you operating from?” says Harmandar.
It turned out that the Sikh farmer from the Indian state of Punjab who had lately moved to be with considered one of his sons within the London borough of Ilford, was operating from his previous.
“He had misplaced his daughter, spouse, and a youthful son in fast succession within the earlier years,” says Harmandar.” His household was involved he would fall into melancholy.”
The coach knew the way it felt. He too had misplaced somebody just a few months earlier than: his father.
For the following 14 years, Harmandar says, Fauja Singh was one of the best scholar he had. Fauja’s years at his sprawling rice and sugarcane fields of rural Jalandhar had made him powerful. Folklore had it that he labored, even when his bulls have been drained.
Fauja skilled usually, trusted his coach absolutely, and could not inform a mile from a kilometer. “I used that to my benefit,” says Harmandar. “When there have been a number of miles left, I used to inform him they have been kilometers.”
From the 12 months 2000, Singh accomplished 9 full marathons and several other shorter ones. He travelled the world, from Hong Kong to New York, typically plodding the observe in his vivid yellow turban. On the 2003 Toronto Waterfront Marathon, he clocked his private greatest of 5 hours and forty minutes. Eight years later on the similar occasion, he turned the oldest individual to complete a marathon. In doing so, he beat greater than a hundred a lot youthful runners within the 26.2 mile occasion.
Fauja was 100 years outdated then, in response to his passport. But, he by no means made the file books – as a result of he did not have a start certificates to show his age. Few in British-ruled colonial India within the twentieth century had one.
Centenarian marathon runner Fauja Singh, then aged 101, heart, runs in a 10-kilometer race, held as a part of the annual Hong Kong Marathon, in Hong Kong in 2013.
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Kin Cheung/AP
The media beloved Fauja anyway. He hardly ever refused interviews, typically along with his coach or a member of the family translating from Punjabi. Sports activities model Adidas featured him of their “Unattainable is nothing” advert marketing campaign. A kids’s author printed a ebook on him. A bureaucrat-turned-author penned a biography of the “Turbaned Twister.”
Again at his household residence in India — a three-storied farmhouse in Beas Pind village, Punjab — medals, trophies and certificates piled up. Fauja’s household proudly displayed them on cabinets and wood cupboards, turning their lounge right into a sporting hall-of-fame.
Fauja retired from marathons in 2013, and moved again to India round 2022. Locals typically invited him to sporting occasions. “He’d go as a visitor however inform the organizers, I additionally desire a medal,” his granddaughter Japneet Kaur recalled. “At residence, he’d climb the sofa and cling it by a nail.”
On the afternoon of 14 July 2025, Fauja had stepped out to verify on his rice fields within the neighboring village when he was hit by an SUV. He lay in a heap on the busy freeway for a number of minutes till Balbir Singh, a good friend of his son’s who was passing by, observed him. “The medical doctors mentioned he might’ve been saved if we would reached sooner,” mentioned Balbir. “However he’d misplaced an excessive amount of blood.”
His demise at age 114 made headlines around the globe. India’s prime minister mentioned the information pained him. His London operating membership mentioned they’d construct a Fauja Singh Clubhouse on his coaching route. A bunch of Indian sculptors began carving a life-size statue of him.
But it surely additionally put a highlight on India’s lethal roads the place greater than 150,000 individuals are killed in accidents yearly. Final 12 months, India’s freeway minister Nitin Gadkari admitted in Parliament that the demise toll retains rising yearly. “Once I go to attend worldwide conferences the place there’s a dialogue on street accidents, I attempt to cover my face,” he mentioned.
Japneet Kaur, Fauja Singh’s granddaughter and an aspiring marathon runner, sits in entrance of his many awards.
Omkar Khandekar/NPR
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Omkar Khandekar/NPR
Police arrested a 26-year-old man from a neighboring Dasupur village for the hit-and-run. Amrit Singh Dhillon had tried his greatest to keep away from detention after the collision, native media quoted the police saying. He took his automotive off-road to flee CCTV cameras, coated it in his storage, switched to a motorcycle “and was casually going round.”
The alacrity of the police motion shocked Fauja’s household. “Hit-and-runs occur as a result of culprits suppose they’ll get away,” Fauja’s nephew Parmeet Singh mentioned. “If police all the time acted promptly, folks wouldn’t be as careless on the roads.”
Amrit Singh Dhillon’s aunt, too, didn’t appear to count on the arrest. When NPR visited her residence in Dasupur village, she was unwilling to be interviewed or share her identify. However she did say this: “The media picked up the difficulty as a result of he [Fauja] was a celeb. In any other case, accidents occur on a regular basis.”
Why are India’s roads so harmful?
Native visitors police chief Manjit Singh has a concept: “The youth right now watch overseas movies and attempt to imitate the stunts.” However the pedestrians, he says, are not any higher.
Fauja Singh was killed on a busy freeway. His granddaughter Japneet says, he normally crossed the visitors median to get to his fields within the village on the opposite facet. Many individuals within the two villages do the identical; the closest pedestrian crossing is greater than half a mile away. On the day NPR visited the place, we noticed a father leaping the median with two children on his bike.
“The mentality of Indian pedestrians is, let’s take a shortcut,” says officer Manjit Singh.
However Rohit Baluja, director of the Indian Institute of Street Visitors Schooling, says there’s a cause folks take such dangers.
Street development has boomed below the decade-long rule of India’s prime minister Narendra Modi. Many of those roads, Baluja says, lower throughout cities and villages however lack warning indicators or pedestrian underpasses. When there’s an accident, he says, authorities normally blame the drivers or pedestrians. “Not even a single engineer or a street authority is booked for failures.”
Baluja’s institute conducts analysis and coaching in visitors administration. “After we examine accidents, and we have performed round 8,000 such circumstances, we discover that nearly 30-33% are due to failures of the street and visitors engineering.”
He factors to the place the place Fauja Singh died: “There are strategy roads to 2 villages reverse one another. However there are not any rumble strips on the freeway within the center, no signal saying there’s an upcoming junction. We construct roads for the autos. We don’t take into account the weak street customers.”
Fauja Singh’s physique hadn’t failed him until his final day. He took no medicines, ate thrice a day, and gorged on the mangoes that grew in his yard. Age had stooped his again and shrunk him to his bones. He nonetheless walked in all places, typically with out a strolling stick.
Fauja had no formal schooling. Days earlier than he died, his granddaughter was instructing him the English alphabet. In flip, Fauja taught her – an aspiring marathoner – methods of his commerce. “Solely the opposite day he was displaying me the best way to do a warm-up,” Japneet, 16, recollects. “I instructed him that he ought to be our PE instructor.”
If not for the accident, his biographer Khushwant Singh says Fauja Singh might need lived on for a few years. “I might as soon as requested him if he was afraid of dying,” he recollects.
“Fauja mentioned, ‘I am afraid. As a result of now, I’m absolutely dwelling my life.'”
