“ I love to find myself running in my own city,” says a beaming and yet nostalgic Fauja Singh, the oldest marathon runner and a World Record holder.
The 94-year-old Fauja Singh was here to participate in the ‘Celebrity fun race,’ a half marathon organized by the CT Educational Society at the Burlton Park statdium here. UK-based Fauja Singh, an ikon for Sikh identity in Europe, is also the brand ambassador of Adidas shoe and apparel company.
“ I am happy that I am running in my own city for the first time. I hail from Beas village of Jalandhar district. Losing or winning does not matter in such events as people get involved and motivated to see others running. A point comes where they want to do the same and if you have attained that point you have won,” a says Fauja Singh while recalling his early days at his village. 
In a special message for youngsters, Fauja Singh said all out efforts were needed to drive them out of quagmire of vices like drug addiction. “Such events play a vital role in doing a yeoman’s service in this regard. As for myself, I have been keeping a strict regimen for years. I have to walk 8-10 kilometers a day at any cost. Every 8th day I go for a marathon to keep myself as fit as a fiddle." He has never been beaten by any veteran, except once, and that too years back and by someone thirty years his junior. "Even today I am running without any practice and it is for the first time in my life that I am doing so at the insistence of the organizers, who wanted to see me here come what may.”
The CT Half Marathon 2007 was the first half marathon in Punjab, was organized for charity.
Singh began running long distances in 2000. He lined up for his first Flora London Marathon at the grand old age of 89, taking 6 hours and 54 minutes to complete the 26.2-mile course. A year later, he ran the same time to set a world record for anyone aged 90. Singh has also competed in the Toronto and New York marathons and, in 2003, he finished the Toronto run in 5 hours and 40 minutes, the fastest time recorded by someone of his age.
Fauja Singh's inspirational achievements made him Adidas poster boy for its influential "Impossible Is Nothing" campaign. He has done a lot of charity work all the money he received from the Adidas advertising campaign was given to charity and he ran the London Marathon for the British Heart Foundation and Bliss, a premature baby charity. "I think that it is a good thing for the oldest runner in the race to run for the youngest people in our world," he said.
Fauja Singh was also among the prominent personalities chosen to carry the Olympic torch across the streets of London.
Aged 94, he can't stop breaking world records. In the senior category, he not only set a new 200m title, but halved it from 76.8 seconds to a mere 49.28 seconds.
He has also set the UK record for the 400 meters, 800m, 1 mile, and 3000m.
When France decided to enforce secularism denying individuals their religious identity, they denied Sikhs the turban, the
Muslims their hijab and other people of faith their symbols. Fauja Singh did not sit by and watch. “To us the turban is very important, and Fauja Singh wears a turban. He’s set world records and other things wearing a turban." said Harmander Singh, Fauja’s trainer.
Fauja Singh named his records the ‘Turban records’, in protest against France’s ban on religious symbols and headgear to promote human rights and freedom.
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