Punjab loses its World Champion
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in
Sardarni Mann Kaur, who was an Indian track-and-field athlete, died today, at the age of 105, after suffering from gallbladder cancer. She has won multiple gold medals at the World Masters Athletics. She is a resident of Patiala (Punjab).
She holds the world records in the Over-100 years old categories for a variety of events. At the age of 103, she was given the Nari Shakti Puraskar award by the President of India.
Her coach was her own son Gurdev Singh. In her career she won 31 international gold medals and over 13 national golds. She took to athletics at the age of 93. Once she said “there is no age limit in trying out something new. “I have started running and throwing javelin at the age of 93.”
In 2017, the centenarian made a 100m dash in a jaw-dropping 74 seconds at the World Masters Games in Auckland. In 2019, Kaur (age 103) won gold in the 200 meter dash at 3:01.61 and shot put at 2.21 m at the Dec 2019 Asian Masters Championship in Malaysia. During an international meet in Poland in 2019, she won four events – shot put, 60m sprint, 200m and javelin throw – in her age category.
On 8 March (International Women’s Day) 2020 she was handed over the Nari Shakti Puraskar award. The award was presented at the Presidential palace in New Delhi by the President of India with the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, in attendance. She is nicknamed as the “Miracle from Chandigarh”.
July 31,2021
