Greatest Indian Athletes of All Time: From Milkha Singh to Neeraj Chopra

For decades, Indian athletics was a story of heroic near-misses: Milkha Singh’s fourth place in Rome, PT Usha’s hundredth of a second in Los Angeles. Then, on 7 August 2021, Neeraj Chopra threw 87.58m in Tokyo and won India’s first Olympic gold in track and field. Everything in between is the story of how India got there.

These are the greatest Indian athletes of all time, from Milkha Singh to Neeraj Chopra. We have picked ten who changed what Indian athletes believed was possible: the first to win, the first to break through on the world stage, and the records that stood for generations. They are listed in the order their careers peaked. Every key fact has been checked against at least two sources where possible; where it has not, we say so, and the fact-check table at the end shows the status of each claim.

1. Milkha Singh: the Flying Sikh

Milkha Singh was independent India’s first great athlete. At the 1958 Asian Games in Tokyo, he won the 200m and 400m. The same year, at the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, he won the 440 yards in 46.6 seconds, beating world record holder Malcolm Spence. It was India’s first Commonwealth Games gold in athletics, and no Indian won another for 52 years. He retained his 400m title at the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta and added 4x400m relay gold, for four Asian Games golds in all.

His most famous race was one he lost. In the 400m final at the 1960 Rome Olympics, Milkha led early, then eased off, and finished fourth in 45.73 seconds, just out of the medals. That time stood as the Indian national record until Paramjit Singh ran 45.70 in 1998.

The nickname “the Flying Sikh” came from Pakistani leader Ayub Khan after Milkha beat Abdul Khaliq in Pakistan in 1960. Milkha Singh died in Chandigarh on 18 June 2021, aged 91.

Note: sources disagree on how long his 400m record stood. Wikipedia says it was broken by Paramjit Singh in 1998, which is 38 years. Olympics.com says “over four decades”.

2. Gurbachan Singh Randhawa: India’s first all-rounder

Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, known as “the Indian Jim Thorpe”, was the most versatile athlete of his generation. He won the decathlon at the 1962 Asian Games, then finished fifth in the 110m hurdles at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in 14.07.

In 1961, he became the first athlete to receive the Arjuna Award, and he was later awarded the Padma Shri. After retiring, he stayed at the centre of Indian athletics, serving for 18 years as chairman of AFI’s selection committee.

3. Kamaljeet Sandhu: the first golden woman

Long before PT Usha, there was Kamaljeet Sandhu. Born in Firozpur, Punjab, in 1948, she won the 400m at the 1970 Asian Games in Bangkok in 57.3 seconds, becoming the first Indian woman to win an individual Asian Games gold. She received the Padma Shri in 1971, and opened the door for every Indian woman sprinter who followed.

4. Sriram Singh: a record that lasted 42 years

Sriram Singh reached the 800m final at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the race won by Alberto Juantorena in a world record. Sriram finished seventh in 1:45.77. In the heats, he had set an Asian record of 1:45.86.

His 1:45.77 stood as the Indian national record for 42 years, until Jinson Johnson broke it in June 2018. He also won 800m gold at the 1974 and 1978 Asian Games, and received the Arjuna Award (1973) and the Padma Shri (1974).

5. PT Usha: the Payyoli Express

No Indian athlete has been more loved than PT Usha. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, she finished fourth in the 400m hurdles in 55.42, missing the bronze by one hundredth of a second. A medal would have made her the first Indian to win an Olympic medal in athletics.

Two years later, at the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, she won four golds, in the 200m, 400m, 400m hurdles and 4x400m relay, all in Games record times, and silver in the 100m. Across the Asian Championships from 1983 to 1998, she won 14 golds among 23 medals.

Her 55.42 stood as the Indian 400m hurdles record for 42 years, until Vithya Ramraj ran 54.75 at the 2026 Asian Games. Since December 2022, PT Usha has been president of the Indian Olympic Association, the first woman to hold the role.

6. Anju Bobby George: India’s first world medal

On 30 August 2003 in Paris, Anju Bobby George jumped 6.70m in the long jump to win bronze, India’s first ever medal at the World Athletics Championships. Years later, she revealed she had competed her whole career with only one kidney, a condition she discovered in 2001.

She also won Asian Games gold in Busan in 2002 and Commonwealth bronze in Manchester the same year. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, she jumped 6.83m, a national record that stood until Ancy Sojan jumped 6.88m in 2026. Her silver at the 2005 World Athletics Final in Monaco was later upgraded to gold, after the original winner, Russia’s Tatyana Kotova, was disqualified for doping.

7. Krishna Poonia: ending a 52-year wait

After Milkha Singh’s gold in Cardiff in 1958, India waited 52 years for another Commonwealth Games athletics title. Krishna Poonia ended it at the 2010 Games in Delhi, winning the discus with 61.51m. It was a clean sweep: Harwant Kaur took silver and Seema Antil bronze. Poonia became the first Indian woman to win Commonwealth Games gold in athletics.

She also won Asian Games bronze in 2006 and 2010 and reached the discus final at the London 2012 Olympics. She later entered politics and was elected an MLA in Rajasthan in 2018.

8. Neeraj Chopra: the greatest of them all

Neeraj Chopra did what no Indian before him had managed. Born in Khandra village in Haryana’s Panipat district in 1997, he first made headlines by winning the 2016 World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz with 86.48m, a world U20 record.

On 7 August 2021, he won javelin gold at the Tokyo Olympics with 87.58m, India’s first Olympic gold in track and field. He followed it with world silver in 2022, the Diamond League title in 2022, world gold in Budapest in 2023 (88.17m) and Olympic silver in Paris in 2024 (89.45m). He has also won Asian Games gold twice (2018 and 2023) and Commonwealth gold in 2018. In May 2025, he threw 90.23m in Doha to become the first Indian past 90 metres.

2026: Neeraj won Commonwealth Games silver in Glasgow in July with 85.83m. In late August, he announced he had torn an ankle ligament in training and would miss the rest of the season, including his Asian Games title defence in Aichi-Nagoya.

9. Hima Das: the first global track title

On 12 July 2018 in Tampere, Finland, an 18-year-old from Assam was fourth coming off the final bend of the World U20 400m final. Hima Das then ran down the whole field to win in 51.46. She became the first Indian, man or woman, to win a global title on the track, and the first Indian woman to win a global athletics title at any level.

Her finishing kick, and the image of her standing on the podium with the Indian flag, made her a national star overnight. It showed a generation of Indian sprinters that they could win at world level, not just compete.

10. Avinash Sable: from Siachen to the Olympic final

Avinash Sable’s story is one of the most remarkable in Indian sport. Born in Mandwa, Maharashtra, he joined the Indian Army after Class 12 and served on the Siachen Glacier before taking up running through the Army’s athletics programme in 2015. He switched to the steeplechase in 2017.

He won Commonwealth silver in Birmingham in 2022 in a national record of 8:11.20, missing gold by only 0.05 seconds and winning India’s first Commonwealth steeplechase medal. At the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, he won the steeplechase in a Games record of 8:19.50 and took silver in the 5,000m. In 2024 he lowered his national record to 8:09.91 at the Paris Diamond League, and later that summer he reached the Olympic final in Paris, finishing 11th. He added Asian Championships gold in 2025.

The next generation: who could join this list?

2026 has been a record-breaking year for Indian athletics, and some of its stars are already rewriting the legends’ marks.

• Vithya Ramraj: broke PT Usha’s 42-year-old 400m hurdles record with 54.75 to win Asian Games bronze. Read her profile.
• Gurindervir Singh: the fastest Indian ever, with a 100m national record of 10.09.
• Tejaswin Shankar: the first Indian to score more than 8,000 points in the decathlon.
• Ancy Sojan: broke Anju Bobby George’s long jump record with 6.88m.

See every Indian national record from 2026.

Greatest Indian athletes of all time: summary

Fact check: how we verified this list

We checked each athlete’s key achievements against reference and news sources. This table shows how well each one is supported.