in which year did milkha singh win the first national title in the 400-m race
1960
title: Milkha Singh text: was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour, in recognition of his sporting achievements. The race for which Singh is best remembered is his fourth-place finish in the 400 metres final at the 1960 Olympic Games, which he had entered as one of the favourites. Various records were broken in the race, which required a photo-finish and saw American Otis Davis being declared the winner by one-hundredth of a second over German Carl Kaufmann. Singh's fourth-place time of 45.73 became the Indian national record and held for almost 40 years. From beginnings that saw him orphaned and displaced during title: Milkha Singh text: methods. In 1958, Singh set records for the 200m and 400m in the National Games of India, held at Cuttack, and also won gold medals in the same events at the Asian Games. He then won a gold medal in the 400m (440 yards at this time) competition at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games with a time of 46.6 seconds. This latter achievement made him the first gold medalist at the Commonwealth Games from independent India. Before Vikas Gowda won the gold in 2014, Milkha was the only Indian male to have won an individual athletics gold medal title: Milkha Singh text: 77 of his 80 races, but these are spurious. The number of races in which he participated is not verified, nor is the number of victories, but he lost a 400m race at the 1964 National Games in Calcutta to Makhan Singh and he did not finish first in any of his four races at the 1960 Olympic Games or the aforementioned qualification races at the 1956 Olympics. Singh's time in the 1960 Olympics 400m final, which was run on a cinder track, set a national record that stood until 1998 when Paramjit Singh exceeded it on a synthetic track title: Milkha Singh text: at those Games. Singh was persuaded by Jawaharlal Nehru to set aside his memories of the Partition era to race successfully in 1960 against Abdul Khaliq in Pakistan, where a post-race comment by the then General Ayub Khan led to him acquiring the nickname of "The Flying Sikh". Some sources say that he set a world record of 45.8 seconds in France, shortly before the Rome Olympics in the same year but the official report of the Games lists the record holder as Lou Jones, who ran 45.2 at Los Angeles in 1956. At those Olympics, he was involved in title: Athletics at the 1960 Summer Olympics – Men's 400 metres text: upright had his body ahead of Kaufmann. After a suspenseful pause, Davis was ruled the winner. The photo made further famous after being published in Life Magazine. In fourth place, Milkha Singh ran the Indian national record that lasted 44 years until the 2004 Olympics. There is potential confusion with two athletes in the competition named Malcolm Spence, both qualifying to the second semifinal. The (one year) younger Malcolm Spence representing South Africa eventually netted the Bronze medal, while the senior Malcolm Spence from Jamaica, shortened his name to "Mal" while representing the British West Indies, achieved a Bronze as