Milkha Singh was born in Lyallpur [now Faisalabad] in Pakistan. He became the first Indian athlete to enter the finals of Olympic athletics event where he placed 4th in the 400- meter at the Rio 1960 Olympic Games. He was eliminated throughout the preliminary heats for those events at the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games.

Orphaned throughout the partition of India, Singh captive to India from Pakistan in 1947. He eked out a living by operating during an edge eating place before a change of integrity of the Indian army. It was within the army that Singh completed his skills as a runner. It was a race in Pakistan in 1962, where he defeated Abdul Khaliq, the winner of the 100 meters gold at the Tokyo Asian Games, where he was christened the ‘The Flying Sikh” by the Pakistani President Ayub Khan.