After tha race, there was an announcement on the loudspeakers .what was the announcement? what did it show about the way that the Pakistani people responded to Milkha Singh's achievement?
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No-one had heard of Milkha Singh at the Commonwealth Games," he says. "There were competitors from Australia, England and Canada, from Uganda, Kenya and Jamaica - the athletes who took part were world class."
He also had the hopes of the Commonwealth's most populous nation weighing heavy on his shoulders. India had never won a gold medal in the history of the games.
Singh grew up in a small village in what, during his childhood, was still British India. He would walk 10km barefoot to school every day, crossing burning sands, and wading through two canals, his books balanced on his head.
He was a teenager in 1947, when partition created the two sovereign nations of India and Pakistan. Punjab, where Singh lived, was divided between the two countries and some found themselves on the wrong side of this new border.
Many Sikhs and Hindus faced persecution in Pakistan as did many Muslims in India. About half a million people were killed and millions more displaced.
As Sikhs in Pakistan, Singh's family did not escape the violence.
Terrible images of dogs and vultures scavenging on mutilated bodies still haunt Singh's memories of that time. He remembers people were so fearful that they killed their young daughters rather than risk them being kidnapped.
"My village was surrounded," he recalls. "We were told to convert to Islam or prepare to die."
When their village was attacked - by outsiders, he emphasises, not by Muslim neighbours - Singh witnessed the murder of his parents and some of his brothers and sisters.
He escaped to the jungle with a group of other boys, then managed to get on a train bound for Delhi.
The trains were being searched by vigilante groups, but the boys hid under the seats in the ladies' carriage and begged the women not to turn them in. They didn't and the boys survived.
After several difficult years living in Delhi, Singh joined the Indian Army - and it was here that his athletic prowess emerged. His instructor in the army taught him how to run properly and after coming sixth in a cross-country race against 400 other soldiers, he was selected for further training.
"All of this started when I was with the army," he says. "I give credit to them for making me a world famous name."
In 1958, on the day of the big race in Cardiff, the athletes were taking their place on the starting line. Singh knew that the man to beat was South Africa's Malcolm Spence.
"My coach convinced me - drilled it into my head - that I could win the race regardless of whether Spence was a world class, world record holder. He was nothing before me if I ran my race as planned.