Gill won 52 major international invitational competitions in North America and Europe, setting 19 new records in the process. In addition, he won five NCAA Championships, all with new records.[2] Some of those records stood 40 years later.[3]
Early life
Gill was sent for playing volleyball when he was in eighth grade. After three years, he quit volleyball and took up high jump. When he failed in high jump in a championship at the age of 17, he tried triple jump and won with a jump of 41 feet and 4 inches. After this, he received a sports scholarship from the Kurukshtetra University. He attended for one year before moving to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.[4]
College career
Gill attended Cal Poly, competing in the triple jump from 1968 to 1971, winning five total NCAA championships between divisions and setting five combined NCAA records.
In August 1970, while majoring in business administration, he was selected as the CCAA's Male Athlete of the Year for all sports.[5]
On May 8, 1971, Gill triple-jumped to a mark of 55 feet, 1.25 inches (or 16.79m) at the West Coast Relays in Fresno, producing the second-longest triple jump ever on American soil at the time, and earning Outstanding Athlete of the Meet accolades.[6][7][8] As a Cal Poly senior in 1971, he ranked sixth in the world during the year.[9]
During an era when intercollegiate athletes could move up from the College Division ranks, Gill went on to claim two NCAA Division I individual outdoor national championships: first in 1970 at Drake and then again in 1971 in Seattle.
A profile in the Sacramento Bee in 1971 described Gill as "Six feet, 163 pounds, fast enough to run 100 yards in 9.6 seconds, strong enough to do squat jumps with 300 pounds across his shoulders, dead-lift 500 pounds, practice half squats carrying 650 pounds and to do toe raises packing 700 pounds."[4]
After placing second in a pre-Olympic meet in Munich, he competed while injured in 1972 and failed to reach the final.[1][11] Gill won one gold and one silver medal at the Asian Games.[12]
Gill won two of India's five-ever medals at the Commonwealth Games. There were attempts to remove him from the national team, but Prime MinisterIndira Gandhi intervened to allow him to compete.[10]
Later years
He was elected into the Cal Poly Mustangs' Hall of Fame in 1993[13] as the only Asian to receive the honor. He currently resides in Turlock in central California.[14]
