Budhia Singh – The Four Year Old Who Ran Forty Miles

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Budhia Singh (born 2002) is an Indian boy and the world’s youngest marathon runner. Generally considered an athletic phenomenon, Budhia has participated in (and finished) races of up to 60 kilometers (37.3 miles) in roughly six hours and thirty minutes.

Budhia’s running ability has led to celebrity status and he has appeared in a number of television commercials. These commercials and Budhia’s fame have allegedly lead to significant financial gains on the behalf of the late Mr. Biranchi Das, Budhia’s coach. Controversy over the nature of these gains had led to accusations of exploitation against Mr. Das and an official inquiry by Indian child welfare officials was launched on 4 January 2006.

On 8 May 2006, a government statement had ordered that he stop running until the age of 11. The announcement came after doctors found the boy had “high blood pressure and cardiological stress”.

On 13 August 2007, Biranchi Das was arrested by Indian police on suspicion of torture. Singh accused his coach of beating him and withholding food, and said he would give up running. The police said they had arrested and charged Das with criminal intimidation. Das claimed that Singh’s family made up the charges because of a few petty rows. He said he recently expelled Singh’s sister from a judo school he ran because she misbehaved, and he had refused to build Singh’s mother a new house. However, Singh showed reporters scars he said were left by the coach’s mistreatment. “He hung me upside down from a ceiling fan,” he told reporters. “He locked me in a room for two days without food.” Das denied the charges and said the scars are old, the result of the boy’s tough early childhood in a slum in the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar.