Fauja Singh

Long-distance runner who became a sporting legend after competing in his first marathon aged 89

- Patrick Kidd

When Fauja Singh did his first training session for the London marathon in 1999, he was unlike any of his coach's other pupils. Not only was he very old, at 88, to be attempting his first 26-mile race but he appeared in a three-piece suit. Fauja had seen the New York marathon on TV and decided that this was what he wanted to do but, since this was London, standards had to be upheld.

Harmander Singh, who has trained hundreds of runners, persuaded him to remove his jacket and after a few medical questions asked him for his motivation.

Fauja said he needed something to distract himself from the pain of losing his wife, his eldest daughter in childbirth and a son, whom he had seen struck on the head by a corrugated iron sheet in a storm.

After that, Fauja had emigrated from the Punjab to live with another son in Ilford, east London, where he took up running. He had done a 20km race but, unclear of the difference between metric and imperial measurements, assumed the marathon was 6,000 metres further, not more than twice the distance. Still, when this was explained, he was undaunted.

"I felt he was different to anyone I'd trained," Harmander said. "He had a glint in his eyes."

Fauja kept challenging his coach to make him run farther. Five months later, in 2000, Fauja was on the starting line in Greenwich Park to run for the neonatal charity Bliss. Harmander said: "It would be the oldest running for the youngest."