fullname country updated event club birth_place nationality pb sport birth_date article_title name
sriram singh shekhawat india september 20 , 2009 800 metres rajputana rifles badnagar , rajasthan , india indian outdoor record -rrb- : 1:45.77 -lrb- 25 july 1976 , indian track and field 14 november 1948 sriram singh
 sriram singh shekhawat
sriram singh

sriram singh shekhawat -lrb- born 14 november 1948 in badnagar , rajasthan -rrb- is a former indian middle distance runner .
sriram singh joined rajputana rifles in 1968 where he came under the influence of the coach ilyas babar .
babar persuaded him to shift his focus from 400m to 800m .
in the 1970 asian games in bangkok , he was beaten to the second place in the 800 by jimmy crampton of burma .
singh went out in the heats in the munich olympics in 1972 but his time of 1:47.7 bettered crampton 's asian record .
prior to the competition he had never run on synthetic tracks .
he improved it to 1:47.6 while winning the gold in the teheran asian games of 1974 .
the high point of sriram singh 's career was the 800m race in 1976 montreal olympics .
the qualifying round , the semifinal and the final were run on successive days .
in the first race , he broke his own asian record with a time of 1:45.86 in the semifinal , he came second in a time of 1:46.42 in the final , singh made a huge rush from the break at 300 meters to take lead at the bell with a time of 50.85 ahead of cuban alberto juantorena 's 50.90 .
juantorena caught up with him again around the 550m mark and won in a world record time of 1:43.50 .
singh faded away in the home straight to finish seventh with a time of 1:45.77 .
juantorena later attributed his world record to sriram 's front running .
sriram singh 's time stood as the asian record until it was broken by lee jin-il in 1994 and as of 2015 is still the indian national record .
he retained his 800m gold medal in the 1978 asian games -lrb- 1:48.80 -rrb- , but was eliminated in the heats of the same event in the moscow olympics .
