London, Among the thousands who participated in the 2026 London Marathon were two British Sikh runners who had been training to raise thousands of pounds for charity.
Baldev Singh Bains, 80, and Manny Singh Kang, 52, joined the estimated 59,000 runners on Sunday at the annual marathon sponsored by Tata Consultancy Services .
They were cheered on by over 19,000 people who gathered along the over 42-km route for the long-distance race, which saw Kenyan Sabastian Sawe beat the marathon time barrier to complete the challenge in just under two hours.
“It’s been incredible, truly historic. We’ve got some incredible sports performances, incredible people raising money for charity, and we have the highest number of participants with a disability and the most diversity we’ve ever had,” said Hugh Brasher, London Marathon Event Director.
Bains was inspired to raise funds for a charity in memory of Fauja Singh – the well-known UK-based marathon runner who died aged 114 in a hit-and-run incident in Punjab last July.
The over 7,500 pounds raised through the GoFundMe fundraising online platform will go towards the creation of the Fauja Singh Clubhouse, a multi-use sports club proposed by the Sikhs in the City charity to provide facilities to improve community wellbeing in the London Borough of Redbridge.
“The Creator/Vaheguru arranged to meet Bhai Fauja Singh Ji, Marathon Runner, in his 100 plus years age, who encouraged me to start walking around Beal High School, Redbridge, and then joining Parkrun. This is where in his memory the Fauja Singh Clubhouse will be built,” shared Bains.
“Due to his encouragement, guidance and love I started getting good health and happier. My doctor, who had been increasing my medicine regularly, started decreasing them,” he said.
Bains has been guided by the same coach who worked with Fauja Singh to help him with his running and preparing for the London Marathon. A second beneficiary of the octogenarian runner’s fundraising efforts will be the non-profit social enterprise One Humanity, working on carbon emission reduction.
Kang, meanwhile, is a regular runner who had dubbed his 2026 challenge as “Manny’s Marathon Madness” as it included walking to London from his home in Wolverhampton – an estimated 209km distance.
“I walked to London and ran the marathon without any sleep,” Kang announced on social media as he hit the finish line.
He raised over 325,000 pounds via the Just Giving online fundraising platform for Dementia UK, a specialist nurse charity providing care for families affected by Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
“The energy inside us all is the same and using it means we do justice to the human life we have been given. I thank all those that join me to help the causes we support,” he said.
Football fan Kang is popular for his “Samosa Saturdays” campaign, cooking and selling samosas for a small donation every Saturday during a Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, or Wolves, home game.
“Next Samosa Saturday on May 2nd before we play Sunderland,” he announced.
The London Marathon is among the world’s largest annual day-long fundraising events, with TCS as its title sponsor since 2022. Among the thousands who took to the UK capital’s roads on Sunday were more than 700 fundraising finishers for the Charity of the Year – end-of-life care provider Marie Curie.
The event holds the record as the biggest one-day fundraiser, with nearly 90 million pounds raised last year and the 2026 total to be announced in the coming months.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
