In the minutes after he stretched the limits of what was thought possible with a blistering new national record of 10.09 seconds in the men’s 100m at the Federation Cup on Saturday night, Gurindervir Singh couldn’t help reminding the people who had once told him he couldn’t do what he had just done.
He recalled the time when he was a 13-year-old kid in Jalandhar and first started getting serious about pursuing athletics as a sprinter; more than a few coaches tried to dissuade him.
“They told me there’s no future in the 100m. I should instead try to run the 400m. They said the 100m was not for Indians. Indians didn’t have the body type for it. But I wanted to prove them wrong. I wanted to prove Indian genes tagde hain,” he would say.
Gurindervir’s words were backed by the weight of kinetic action that leaves him less than a tenth of a second away from the magical 10-second barrier on Saturday. But anyone who’s followed the 25-year-old long enough knows he’s not said anything he hadn’t believed before. He’d spoken the same words last year as well when he’d broken the national record—then 10.23s—by clocking 10.20s at the Indian Grand Prix in Bengaluru last year. “See, until someone does it, no one will believe it can be done,” he had said then.
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James Hillier, athletics director at the Reliance Foundation in Mumbai, where Gurindervir trains, says, “Whatever his motivation is, you go with it, don’t you? There’s nothing more satisfying than proving people wrong. It’s nice when people say you can’t do something and you proved them wrong. It’s very, very satisfying,” Hillier says.
What would be even more satisfying is knowing how hard it’s been to get to this point. His talent was obvious even early in his career—as a 21-year-old, he first made his mark running a 10.27, just a hundredth of a second over the then national record in 2021.
A downward spiral followed right after that peak, following a serious health scare. He’s still not sure how, but the mucus lining of his intestine was damaged, and he lost nearly eight kilograms of weight in 12 days. For a year, his weight swung between extremes.
Indeed, in 2022, when Gurindervir first approached Hillier, hoping to join the training group, the English-born coach was just starting out; he didn’t get the response he would have hoped for.
“He really had a lot of health issues. He was constantly getting sick. I told him, “Guri, you need to get healthy before you can start training with us,” Hillier recalls.
It would be another two years before Gurindervir finally got his gut in working order and joined the training group, which also included Amlan Borgohain, Manikanta Hoblidhar, and Animesh Kujur, all of whom have held the 100m national record at some point.
The competition with India’s best sprinters helped, as did the work Gurindervir put into reconfiguring the type of runner he was.
Until the start of 2025, Gurindervir had been a muscle monster, reckoning that bigger was better in the sprints. But that’s not what Hillier wanted to see.
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“When he first started working with us, I saw a guy who was too heavy and had too much muscle. He was kind of muscling his way down the track. But he was carrying all that extra weight, which was causing him to get injured. When I ran some tests on his tendons, I found out that he’s freaking elastic. He didn’t need to be so big. I told him you’ve got to lean up a bit. And this year, he is in a completely different body shape than last year. He’s got his body fat down from 14 per cent to 7 per cent. Now, he’s a really lean and fast guy and bounces off the track. He’s worked super hard away from the track. It’s not just about training. It’s about managing the exercise and diet,” Hillier says.
Breakthrough and disappointment
Although the physical transformation had started to show results at the Indian Grand Prix in March last year, when Gurindervir broke the national record for the first time, the rest of the season didn’t build on that promise—10.20s would remain his fastest time. Indeed, as Gurindervir’s form tapered off, he eventually finished the year with an 11-second race at the World University Games. Meanwhile, Animesh soon claimed the Indian national record with a time of 10.18s.
According to Hillier, what had happened was that although Gurindervir’s body was ready, his mind hadn’t yet adapted to what it meant to break the record.
“It came as a bit of a surprise, and then it was just bombardment. It was like so much pressure, and he just wasn’t ready for it. And he couldn’t deal with it.” he says.
The experience was a hard one and might have crippled a less resolute individual. But Gurindervir, says his coach, managed to find his way back.
“He came out all guns blazing and broke the national record early last year, and then he just couldn’t hold his form together. We had some really difficult conversations and he’s managed to come back really well. I really respect the lad,” says Hillier.
Eight months of preseason training would go into the start of the 2026 season. And Gurindervir showed just how much he had improved at the Indian Indoor Championships in Bhubaneswar. While he smashed the Indian indoor record in the 60m with a time of 6.60s, there was something else that stood out for Hillier.
“His competition management this year has been amazing. It really started in that indoor competition in Bhubaneswar. He had three races with very little time between events. He wasn’t getting overexcited. He’s just focusing on himself. So, yeah, he did that well. He did exactly what he needed to. He’s really understanding the tactics of the race. You can be a very fast sprinter and not necessarily deliver a fast time in the 100 metres. There’s tactics and there’s a skill to putting it all together. He’s really got that skill this year. It’s not by fluke. He’s worked very, very hard,” says Hillier.
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That ability to stay focused was critical at the Federation Cup in Ranchi. On Friday, Gurindervir had run a stunning semifinal in the 100m and had broken Animesh’s national record by clocking 10.17s despite visibly easing up in the final 20 metres of the race. He had held the record for less than five minutes when Animesh—who didn’t ease up—reclaimed the record with a time of 10.15s.
Rather than mope about his short-lived record, Gurindervir immediately began preparing for the final. There was no social media and no phones.
“I just wanted him to be by himself, just re-energise, go straight back to the hotel, get a massage, get in the ice, get some sleep,” Hillier says.
Single focus
There was no hype over the record he had briefly held. Gurindervir was reminded that his job wasn’t even half done. All he had got was a lane in the final. The same message was drilled into his head on Saturday.
“The warm-up was exactly the same. We didn’t change anything. I told him to trust that he knows the magnitude of the event. And the situation he is in. You don’t need to ‘G’ yourself up. That will come naturally. Just do exactly what you did yesterday. But now finish it. Finish the last 20 or 30 metres. And he executed really, really well,” says Hillier.
With the national record once again in Gurindervir’s name, Hillier believes that the experience from last year would have prepared him better this time around.
“Sometimes, the success is the worst thing that can happen to you. It puts a different level of pressure and expectation on you. He wasn’t ready for that, but this year he is now. He’s learned a lot from last year. He’ll manage this (record) well. It won’t stifle him like it did last year,” Hillier adds.
Indeed, Hiller knows that expectations have now risen exponentially. Having come within 0.01s of the 10-second standard, the next big barrier to clear is an obvious one.
“Guri is 10.09 right now. The record is moving the right way. In training, based on my models, I felt he could do anything from 10.06s to 10.10s if he executed his race perfectly. At 10.09s, he’s still got a little bit more he can improve. But we also expect him to improve this year and next year. You can’t have it that he goes back to running 10.4s and 10.3s. He’ll want to consistently run in the 10.10-second range, and then one day, when everything goes right, you will see another really fast time,” he says.
He refuses to put a time on when a sub-10-second run might actually happen. The journey from 10.09s to 10.00s will almost surely be a challenge of a magnitude greater than what has come till now. But Gurindervir is up for it. He made that very clear when, during his post-race celebrations, he held aloft the back of his bib, on which he had penned a message before he had even stepped onto the track on Saturday night. “Task is not finished yet.”
Published on May 24, 2026