Fauja Singh: 1911-2025

Harmander Singh won’t easily forget his initial encounter with Fauja Singh (no relation), who died on 14th July 2025 aged 114. “He turned up to his first marathon training session in an immaculate three-piece suit and trainers,” the 66-year-old running coach tells me in his living room in Ilford, east London. “I asked him in Punjabi, ‘Where are you getting changed?’ and he replied ‘Changed into what?’”

It was November 1999, on a practice track in Ilford, and the overdressed octogenarian appeared far from marathon-ready. He had, however, once walked 20k for charity and he optimistically told the coach that it was “only another six”. “He didn’t know the difference between kilometres and miles,” Harmander recalls.

It was an inauspicious start to what would become a fruitful and enduring partnership. Fauja would go on to compete in nine marathons, breaking multiple age-related records and becoming the first ever centenarian marathon runner – and Harmander would be by his side every step of the way. On the day they met, Harmander saw some potential in the 88-year-old. “He had a really good gait, a smooth running style, he was very economical. He was tall and slim, a natural,” he says.

Harmander secured Fauja a spot in the following spring’s London Marathon, at which he raised money for Bliss, a charity supporting premature and sick babies. The coach, who also works as a social policy analyst, came up with a snappy tagline for his protégé: ‘The oldest running for the youngest’. But then came a marketing hiccup. Harmander discovered before the race that there was a runner from New York, Abraham Weintraub, who was three months Fauja’s senior. “Abe met Fauja at the starting line in Greenwich and was giving him all sorts of advice,” says Harmander. But Fauja didn’t understand English. “I decided not to translate, and I didn’t need to. Fauja beat Abe by about 90 minutes.”

Through their training sessions, Harmander began to learn more about Fauja’s life before his career change. He was born in 1911 in the village of Beas Pind in the Indian state of Punjab. In early childhood he was too weak to walk and was given the nickname ‘Danda’, Punjabi for ‘stick’, as he was so thin and frail. His background was humble – he didn’t go to school, never learned to read or write, and worked for decades on the family farm. He always loved sport; he played gulli-danda, an ancient South Asian game played with wooden sticks, and another game in which participants would try to catch chickens in a coop as quickly as possible. He lived through the second world war and the carnage of partition, which saw Punjab divided between India and Pakistan along religious lines. He married Gian Kaur, with whom he had six children, three boys and three girls.

In the early 1990s, Fauja lost three family members in quick succession. Gian passed away, his youngest daughter died during childbirth, and he saw one of his sons being killed when a sheet of corrugated iron flew off a roof during a storm and struck him in the head. “He was distraught,” Harmander says. “He fell into a depression… and his family decided it was best for him to have a change of scenery.”

In 1992, now in his early 80s, Fauja moved to Ilford, home to a long-established Sikh community, which included his son Sukhjinder. Harmander recalls Fauja explaining to him how he discovered running. “One day he was watching the New York marathon on TV and he thought to himself, ‘What’s all this about?’ He wanted to run a marathon so he started asking around – and he was sent in my direction.”

Harmander Singh (left) and Fauja Singh (right) training for a marathon

Running became Fauja’s therapy. It helped him work through his grief, and being a man of faith, it allowed him to fulfil his religious obligations. “In Sikhism we have three tenets,” Harmander explains. “Remember God, do an honest day’s work, and share with others, in particular the vulnerable. Running became his honest day’s work, and he [shared with others] through raising money for charity.” Fauja used to tell his coach that the first 20 miles of a marathon were easy – like a child at a funfair, he was dazzled by the crowds and the lights. “And the last six miles he would talk to God, saying ‘Please help me finish this race’,” Harmander recalls.

Despite Fauja’s advanced age, Harmander treated him like any other student and fixated on improving his running. “That first London Marathon he ran in six hours and 54 minutes. His second was a few seconds faster and in his third he knocked off nine minutes,” the coach recalls. “I was disappointed, he should have been faster. And I realised the problem was that after each marathon he lazed around, not training, gallivanting to different parts of the world. So I said [after the third marathon in 2002], ‘Fauja, this year you ain’t going nowhere, mate’. I banned him from taking holidays and in [his fourth London Marathon] he knocked 43 minutes off his best time.”

In Toronto in 2003 Fauja ran the 26.2 miles in five hours and 40 minutes, registering a personal best at the age of 92. By now he was famous, his distinctive yellow turban and grey beard a familiar sight in the media coverage of every long-distance race he entered. He had a new nickname, the ‘Turbaned Tornado’ – an upgrade on ‘Stick’ – and a sponsorship deal with Adidas, who selected him to follow David Beckham and Muhammad Ali as the face of their ‘Impossible is Nothing’ campaign. A strict vegetarian, whose diet largely consisted of chappati, dal and ginger curry, he also starred in a campaign for animal rights nonprofit People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta). Fauja loved being in the spotlight, his coach says. “He used to tell me, ‘When you get old you become like a child again because you want attention. You feel important and valued.’”

Yet being famous was about more than just the attention (and it was never about money; Harmander says he donated his earnings to charity). It was also about the world seeing a man in a turban displaying strength and resilience, promoting the Sikh identity in a positive way. “Most people in the Sikh community would say that Fauja was the most recognised Sikh in the world, even more so than Manmohan Singh,” says Harmander, referring to India’s prime minister between 2004 and 2014. “He’s done more for raising the profile of Sikhs than anyone else, and we all cherish his contribution to the community.”

After breaking his personal best in Canada, Fauja set himself a new target. He wanted to be the oldest marathon runner ever, but the world record was held by a 99-year-old and he had a few years to wait. He and Harmander devised a strategy. He would keep fit, and when he turned 100 he would become the first centenarian to complete a marathon.

As the 2011 Toronto race approached, with Fauja the recent recipient of a birthday telegram from the Queen, Guinness World Records got in touch. His coach still seems upset about what happened next. “They said he needed a birth certificate [to ratify an age record]… but birth certificates weren’t issued in India in 1911,” says Harmander. “Nobody had them.”

Harmander says that due to the Guinness controversy there’s an asterisk next to Fauja’s name questioning his age, although he’d long possessed a British passport saying he was born in 1911. “He was not bothered by it,” says Harmander, “and together we came to the conclusion that Fauja Singh lost nothing by not being in a book next to the woman with the longest toenails… Guinness can do one, frankly.”

We came to the conclusion that Fauja Singh lost nothing by not being in a book next to the women with the longest toenails. Guinness can do one, franky”

Fauja finished the Toronto marathon in just over eight hours, ahead of five other runners. “He realised it was something special, being the first centenarian to run a marathon, but he always said that every race was just as important as any other,” says Harmander. While in Canada, Fauja also set eight centenarian running records for different distances, from the 100m to the 5,000m – but his coach wasn’t satisfied. “I told Fauja after the Toronto marathon, ‘That took you eight hours and 11 minutes. You’ve probably got one more marathon in you, but you’ve got to do it quicker.’ He did one more London Marathon, aged 101, in seven hours and 49 minutes,” Harmander says.

After his last competitive race, a 10k run in Hong Kong in 2013, Fauja reluctantly retired. He wanted to keep going, but his coach knew the time was right to quit. In late 2019 he flew to India to visit family, and due to the Covid lockdowns spent the rest of his life on the farm in Beas Pind.

In June this year BBC Punjabi reporters visited him. His medals hung from the wall, a laminated photo of him meeting the Queen took pride of place among the mementos from his running career. Fauja showed the reporters around his home, and told them that he took walks to keep active but tried to avoid the dangerous nearby motorway. A month later he was crossing that road when he was hit by a speeding SUV. He sustained critical injuries and died in hospital. A driver was later taken into custody.

Indian prime minister Narandra Modi led the tributes, calling Fauja “an exceptional athlete with incredible determination”. The chief minister of Punjab attended Fauja’s funeral, which saw him buried with full state honours. On the same day around 150 members of the Ilford running club that Fauja and Harmander set up, Sikhs in the City, met at the old training course, where he’d turned up 25 years earlier wearing a suit. “The club runners ran 114 laps in his honour,” says the coach, who is currently waiting for planning permission to build a new clubhouse named after Fauja at the training course.

Harmander accepts that unlike his pupil he probably won’t still be running in his 100s, but he’s determined to keep going until he’s at least 74. “I’m the only person to have run the London Marathon and the Great North Run every year for the last 41 years. I want 50 of each,” he says. At next year’s London Marathon he’ll be joined on the course by Fauja’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter, who will be running in his memory.

In his last interview Fauja paid tribute to his coach and friend. “I met a good man named Harmander who changed my life,” he told the BBC Punjabi reporter. “I am here today because of him.” When I mention this, the normally unflappable coach is visibly moved. “It was an honour,” he replies. “I did my best. I was fortunate it worked out so well.”

Friday, April 24th, 2026 - Long reads Slow Journalism