5 hours ago 1

Fauja Singh, Marathon Runner at an Advanced Age, Is Dead

Sports|Fauja Singh, Marathon Runner at an Advanced Age, Is Dead

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/sports/fauja-singh-dead.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Competing in London in 2011, he claimed to be 100, though his exact age remained a mystery. “I run while talking to God,” he said in explaining his endurance.

Wearing a yellow running jersey, a dark turban and a long gray beard, he is seen running on a pedestrian bridge with the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London visible in the distance.

July 14, 2025Updated 7:09 p.m. ET

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.