Milkha Singh is among India's most iconic sports figures and is one of the leading track and field athletes to have represented the country.

Milkha Singh was born in Govindpura, Punjab (present-day Pakistan) and moved to his sister's place in Delhi after the partition. He then joined the Indian Army and took to athletics. His first salary in the army as a technical Jawan was rupees 39 and 8 aanas.

Alongside PT Usha missing an Olympic medal by a cat's whiskers, Milkha Singh missing the 400 metres medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics is part of the Indian sports folklore. Milkha recorded a timing of 45.72 seconds in the 400m event, which made a new national record and stood for almost 40 long years. Unfortunately, he missed an Olympic bronze by the barest of margins.

In 1998, Paramjeet Singh broke Milkha Singh's National record, but he did it on a synthetic track and with fully automatic timing that recorded 45.67 seconds as opposed to Milkha Singh's timing of 45.46 seconds, which had been hand-timed, while electronic system at the games determined the record to be 45.73 seconds.

Milkha's biggest achievements include his gold medal in the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games at Cardiff in the 440 yard dash. Singh became the first gold medalist at the Commonwealth Games from independent India and was the only man to have registered the feat until Vikas Gowda won gold in the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

In 1958, Milkha won gold in both the 200 and 400 metre event at the 1958 Asian Games held in Tokyo. In the Asian games of 1962 held in Jakarta, Milkha Singh returned with gold medals in both the 400m sprint and the 4*400 metre relay.

After Milkha Singh's heroics in Pakistan, where he travelled upon the persuasion of the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he beat the country's leading athlete Abdul Khaliq. After the victory, General Ayub Khan gave him the moniker of the 'Flying Sikh'.

For his contribution to athletics, Milkha Singh was awarded the Padma Shri in 1958. When he was offered the Arjuna award by the Indian government in 2001, he declined, saying that it had come "40 years too late".

Milkha Singh has donated all his medals to the nation. They were first displayed at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi and were later moved to a sports museum in Patiala.