Milkha Singh
Avinash Sable
Gulveer Singh
These three names have three things in common: they are all runners who represent(ed) India, they are (were) soldiers in the Indian Army, and they are the only Indian men to win a medal in a non-relay track event at a Commonwealth Games.
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On a very rainy, blustery, Glaswegian night on Tuesday, Gulveer Singh joined this most elite Indian running list with the race of his life, winning Commonwealth Games silver in the men's 10,000m with a finish in 27:49.78. It wasn't the fastest he's ever run (that was 27:14.88, set last year), but of all the medals he's won so far, this one carries with it the brightest sheen. It's one of those hall-of-fame results, and indeed performances, that should go down in Indian track and field history.
With conditions near-shambolic, the rain falling in sheets, and the temperatures dipping, it was a tough race that Gulveer made sure to plan carefully. He stayed with the lead pack, inside the top 4, for the first 3000m, before dropping deep to conserve energy in the middle.
Around the 6000m mark, he was firmly lower-mid table, running ninth. By the 8000m mark he moved up to sixth and stuck within the smaller sub-group that was breaking out for the finish. It's usually at this point that most challengers wilt as the East Africans take over; the aura of the Kenyan and Ugandan runners, the mere future possibility of their explosive kicks eating at the minds of the other runners.
But Gulveer didn't crumble. Instead, he gradually moved up the gears to fourth, then third on the outside. A runner who places a premium on economy of movement, Gulveer had enough left on the tank at the end and as everyone prepared for a late kick from the usual suspects, he produced a sensational kick of his own with about 150m to go, pulling him away into the silver medal position. In front of him finished Australia's Ky Robinson (27:48.93), and behind him, David Mallarkey of Isle of Man (27:50.28).
The unique nature of this Australia - India - Isle of Man podium may suggest a weak field, but that wasn't the case in Glasgow. Sure, the event didn't have the heft it at times has (the 2018 gold was won by multiple time Olympic and World Champion Joshua Cheptegei, for instance) but it still had plenty of pedigree. Daniel Ebenyo (Kenya) and Oscar Chelimo (Uganda) are both World Championship medallists, and Edwin Kugrat (Kenya) is a consistent finalist at the big events. 20-year-old Samuel Simba Chirop (Uganda) is a rising talent as is his 22-year-old compatriot and Uganda national champion, Dan Kibet. This isn't an event the two great East African running nations usually lose.
But much like Sable four years ago when he broke the Kenyan hegemony in the 3000m steeplechase (revived again this edition in Sable's absence), Gulveer paid no heed to this vast history and all the pressure that comes with it. He didn't let the aura of the East Africans get to him, instead running his own race, setting his own tempo.
As coach Scott Simmons, who trains Gulveer in Colorado Springs, USA, and Gulveer himself told the press after the race, that was a direct result of training and competing abroad, of running against great names again and again and again. Their thinking is that it drives the fear out and replaces it with strategy: how to race, when to kick, how to beat them. It clearly worked.
Simmons insisted after the race that this was just the start for Gulveer, but for the 28-year-old from Sirsa, in Uttar Pradesh's Atrauli district, it's already been quite the journey.
He'd run a lot as a youngster growing up in a farming family, building endurance by running on dirt roads around Sirsa, but that had been with the sole aim of clearing the physical test needed to join the Indian Army as a jawan. He did that and then once in the Army, he had started running inter-unit races seriously for much the same reason as the great Milkha Singh had started all those years back: better food, less arduous shifts, and the possibility of promotion (and the better pay that came with that). Within three years of his first inter-unit race, entered when he was on guard duty in Arunachal Pradesh, he was national champion in the 10,000m at the 2023 National Games.
Since then, it's been a series of records and firsts - he holds the national record in the 3000m, 5000m, 10,000m and 25 km and is the first Indian to run a sub-four-minute mile and a sub-hour half marathon. He also has an Asian Games bronze, but that's a field without Africans.
He'd walked into Glasgow with all that behind him, but few expected this - Indian track and field history. Not even the rain and the cold could spoil it: "If it was hot, my throat would have dried up; my body would have become tight" said a beaming Gulveer after the race. "I adjusted to this weather very well." All those months spent away from family, from home, in Colorado Springs paying off when it mattered most.
"I just wanted to bring a medal for the country," said Gulveer after the race... and boy, did he deliver. Commonwealth Games men's 10,000m silver medallist: Gulveer Singh of India. If you're an Indian sports fan, just how incredible does that sentence read?
