In the space of four days in 2011, Fauja Singh, a native of India who lived in greater London and claimed to be 100 at the time, delivered the most stirring performances ever for a runner of his ascribed age.
On Oct. 13 that year, at a meet in Toronto, he set eight world records for the 95-plus age group in events ranging from 100 meters to 5,000 meters, or 3.1 miles. Doug Smith, the co-chair of Ontario Masters Athletics, called it the “most astonishing achievement” he had ever witnessed.
“He rested between the events by sitting down and having a few sips of tea,” Mr. Smith said in an interview for this obituary in 2017. “He was actually running — both feet off the ground. He was amazing.”
Three days after the track meet, Mr. Singh performed yet another rousing feat. He became the first reputed centenarian to complete a race of 26.2 miles by finishing the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 8 hours 25 minutes 16 seconds. His actual running time was 8:11:05, but in the throng of runners, it took him 14 minutes to reach the start.
There were two complications. Mr. Singh received assistance in crossing the finish line, statisticians said. More troubling, he had a passport but could not produce a birth certificate for race officials or Guinness World Records to verify the authenticity of his achievements.
Mr. Singh died on Monday, his startling accomplishments of 2011 both celebrated and unconfirmed. He was hit by a car while on his daily walk in his home village of Beas Pind in the Punjab region of India and died in a hospital, his former coach, Harmander Singh (no relation), said in a phone interview from London. He had returned to India to live during the pandemic.
Mr. Singh gave his birth date as April 1, 1911, and said he was born in Beas Pind. The country was ruled by Britain at the time, and birth certificates were not regularly issued in villages. His parents were farmers.
Mr. Singh’s case became emblematic of the difficulties race officials faced in determining the ages of elderly runners, especially when the athletes were born in places where birth certificates were unavailable or lost during tumultuous times.
“People in the third world are at a disadvantage for being taken seriously,” Harmander Singh told The New York Times in 2016.
Still, Fauja Singh had his supporters among fans and officials. Mr. Smith, the Ontario Masters official, said, “As far as I’m concerned, he was legit.” But, he added: “They just can’t start allowing world records when there is no birth certificate. It opens a whole can of worms.”
Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University, said in an interview in 2016 that it was possible that a centenarian could run 26.2 miles. Stressing that he had not examined Mr. Singh, Dr. Perls said: “I’m not saying he’s that age. All I’m saying is it’s conceivable to see a 100-year-old running a marathon.”
For his part, Mr. Singh told The Times in 2016 that he did not begrudge officials for not ratifying his achievements. “I’ve done everything openly, nothing in secret,” he said by telephone from London, with his coach serving as an interpreter. “If it makes some people happy to question it, it has made a lot of other people happier who believe it.”
Mr. Singh did not walk until he was 5 and was given the nickname Stick because of his weak and spindly legs, according to an ESPN profile of him in 2013. Rather than attend school, he worked on a farm, feeding cattle and growing corn and wheat. He eventually married and had six children.
Mr. Singh’s wife, Gian Kaur, died in 1992, according to Harmander Singh. His youngest daughter then died in childbirth, and a son was killed in 1994 when struck in the head by a sheet of windblown corrugated metal during a storm. As Mr. Singh was reeling from these tragedies, he said, his masters running career began in 2000, when he was said to be in his 80s.
“Running gave him a new focus in life, made it worth living,” Harmander Singh said, adding that Fauja Singh moved to London after his wife’s death to live with a son.
Mr. Singh’s first marathon was the 2000 London Marathon, which he finished in 6 hours 54 minutes. He ran other marathons in London, New York and Toronto and was featured in an advertising campaign by Adidas. A Sikh, he was called the Turbaned Tornado and was described as the world’s oldest marathon runner by journalists. “The first 20 miles are not difficult,” he told reporters. “As for the last six miles, I run while talking to God.”
By 2016, his marathon days were over, but Mr. Singh continued to walk up to 10 miles a day in Ilford, in East London, his coach said. He ascribed his longevity to a vegetarian diet and abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. His last race, a 10k event in Hong Kong, was in 2012.
“Once I started to overcome the tragedies in my life, I started getting recognition,” Mr. Singh told The Times. “That and support motivated me to carry on. It made me more disciplined to stick to a routine. I could forget my problems and remain happy and avoid negativity.”
In 2020, Simran Jeet Singh, a Sikh writer and activist, published a children’s book, “Fauja Singh Keeps Going.” A tale of perseverance based on Mr. Singh’s life, it was reportedly the first children’s picture book by a major publisher to center on a Sikh story.
“I’m now 108 years old, which means I’m probably more than 100 years older than you,” Mr. Singh wrote in the book’s foreword in a message to young readers. “Can you believe that?”
While his records were not ratified, his efforts reflected perseverance and resilience among the aging, Harmander Singh, said. He noted that Queen Elizabeth II had sent Fauja Singh a telegram on his supposed 100th birthday in 2011 and another when he was said to have turned 105.
While he could not verify Fauja Singh’s age, Harmander Singh said that, presuming the British government did its due diligence in giving him a pension, “I imagine it’s good enough for me.”
Jeré Longman is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk who writes the occasional sports-related story.
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