India’s Gulveer Singh clocks 59:42 to break national half-marathon record in New York

India’s distance running star, Gulveer Singh, smashed the national men’s half-marathon record while finishing third at the New York City Half Marathon on Sunday.

The 27-year-old army athlete clocked 59:42, surpassing the previous national record of 1:00:30 set by steeplechase specialist Avinash Sable at the 2020 Delhi Half Marathon. Gulveer finished just behind South Africa’s Adriaan Wildschutt, who won in 59:30, and Moroccan-born American Zouhair Talbi, who completed the race in 59:41.

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With this performance, Gulveer has become the first Indian distance runner to hold multiple national records, spanning events from the 3,000m track to the 25km road race. He already holds the men’s 5,000m and 10,000m track records and has been a standout performer at the Asian Games and Asian Athletics Championships.

“I’m fit and looking forward to good results in upcoming major international races,” Gulveer told the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) on Sunday.

The army runner, currently based in Colorado Springs, USA, had previously improved the national 10,000m record at the Ten Track Festival in San Juan Capistrano, California, clocking 27:00.22 in 2025. He missed the World Athletics Championships qualification mark by just 22 milliseconds, demonstrating his consistency at the highest level.

Recently, Gulveer was inducted into the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) Core group, joining rising stars like pistol shooters Samrat Rana and Suruchi Singh, and world champion para-shuttler Pramod Bhagat.

With the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in July and the Asian Games in September on the horizon, Gulveer Singh is now aiming to carry his record-breaking form into international podium finishes, further cementing his position as one of India’s leading distance runners.