100 and still running

PTI

• Oldest person to complete a full-distance marathon

 

Toronto, 18 October 2011: Fauja Singh, a 100-year-old runner of Indian-origin, has set a Guinness record of being the oldest person to complete a full-distance marathon here.

 

It took Mr. Singh over eight hours to cross the finish line, more than six hours after Kenya’s Kenneth Mungara won the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon on Sunday for the fourth straight year.

 

Fauja Singh crossing the finish line. (AP)

 

Mr. Singh was the last competitor to complete the course but entered the Guinness Book of World Records.

 

He accomplished the amazing feat, becoming the oldest person ever to complete a full-distance 42-kilometre marathon. Mr. Singh, who only speaks Punjabi, also surprised himself.

 

He said he had set a goal of finishing the race in about nine hours.

 

“Beating his original prediction, he’s overjoyed,” his coach and translator Harmander Singh was quoted as saying by the Toronto Star.

 

“Earlier, just before we came around the [final] corner, he said, “Achieving this will be like getting married again.”

 

“He is absolutely overjoyed, he has achieved his life-long wish,” the coach added. Sunday’s run was his eighth marathon.

 

He ran his first at the tender age of 89 and wasn’t the first time he set a record.