India, Aug. 3 -- At Sports Authority of India's (SAI) Bengaluru centre, where many of India's distance runners who train in the country are based, Gulveer Singh's Commonwealth Games (CWG) races were watched on the common area's television.

"Gulveer was one of them not too long ago," Surinder Singh Bhandari, India's top distance runner turned coach based at SAI Bengaluru, said. "And now that they've seen him go from there to doing things that he did at the CWG, the motivation has rubbed off on others. There was a sense of pride."

The things that he did at the CWG were never done before. Which was to be the first Indian to wear two track and field medals in a single edition of the Games. In the 5,000m and 10,000m, no less, events where th...