Olympic Games:

Harmik Singh represented India at the 1968 Mexico City and 1972 Munich Olympic Games. He was the Captain in Munich.

Harmik studied at Malwa Khalsa Higher Secondary School, Ferozepur and DAV college, Jalandhar.

Harmik started playing hockey at a young age, just eight years old and taking part in the district school championships.

He went on to captain the school team, the division school team, the State schools team before moving to college where he was again captain.

Captaincy was something, which came to him almost as a right.

He went on to lead the University team and later the Combined Universities team which took part for the first time in the Nehru Hockey Tournament in Delhi in 1966.

Harmik’s role in that competition and that of the team as a whole were to make successive Combined Universities teams the most sought after in the tournament.

By the time he had reached the university stage, Harmik had built himself a reputation as one of the best left-backs in the country and it was not long before that he was grabbed by the Border Security Force, the team that mattered most in Indian hockey during that period.

Harmik became a part and parcel of that combination and was a regular member of the team for the next ten years.

During this period he captained the BSF team in the various tournaments and also the Punjab State team in the Nationals.

By then he was well entrenched in the National side, having worn the India colours in the Bangkok Asian Games of 1966 and the London Pre-Olympics Tournament in 1967, the four-nation tournament in Madrid and a tour of Ceylon.

He was selected for the 1970 Asian Games where India finished with a Silver Medal.

Harmik’s next international was the first Hockey World Cup in 1971 in Barcelona where India won the Bronze Medal.

Then came the second Hockey World Cup in Amsterdam with India finishing runners-up to Holland, the hosts.

He was selected for Asian XI v Europe XI in September 1974 to celebrate FIH's 50th Anniversary.

He retired from playing international hockey that same year.

Harmik continued his association with the game and was the national coach for the European tour and the World Cup held in Bombay in 1980.

He was employed as the Chief Hockey Coach with the Sports Authority of India at the NIS Centre in Patiala.

The hockey tradition in the family however has extended beyond Harmik.

Brother Ajit was the India centre-forward in the Munich and Montreal Olympics and holds the world record for scoring the fastest goal in the Olympics. This was against Argentina.

Ajit’s son, Gagan Ajit, played at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

Harmik’s uncle Sahib Singh and elder brother Gurcharan also played for Punjab while his son Paramjit chose athletics, his forte being the 1,500 metres.

Harmik received the Indian National Award ‘Arjuna Puraskar’ in 1997.