How did Milkha Singh lose in the Olympics?
And probably the most famous of them all: the incredible 400m men's final in the 1960 Rome Olympics, in which Milkha Singh finished a whisker behind the bronze medal position. The two guys broke the four-year-old world record of 45.2 seconds in 44.9 seconds. And then came the disqualification: because Milkha had lost his passport before the event, he could not leave Italy. The story goes that the president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) approached Singh after the race and offered him $10,000 if he would not participate in further competitions outside India. When Milkha refused, the IOA president dropped out of the picture. Milkha Singh was already an international star when he competed at the Rome Olympics. But even so, his failure to qualify for the final left a bitter taste with many people who thought he had real chances of winning a gold medal. As for the future king of middle-distance running, Bishen Singh Bedi said after the incident that "if Milkha cannot run then we will send the machine instead". In other words, Milkha was replaced by a robot. The idea came from Dr. Ram Charan Tikoo, who worked with the IOA in those days. He wanted to prove that Indians were capable of competing with the best in the world and therefore needed to be given equal opportunities.