{"id":232730,"date":"2026-01-11T14:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T14:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/232730\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T14:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T14:51:10","slug":"davinder-singh-garcha-olympic-gold-medal-winning-indian-hockey-player-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/232730\/","title":{"rendered":"Davinder Singh Garcha, Olympic gold medal-winning Indian hockey player, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Davinder Singh Garcha, a part of the gold medal-winning Indian hockey team<\/a> at the Moscow 1980 Olympics<\/a>, died on Saturday. He was 73 years old.<\/p>\n

Garcha was hospitalised on January 2 after reporting chest discomfort and underwent a minor surgery before being released four days later. However, he passed away at his home in Jalandhar, Punjab, on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

His cremation will be held on January 14.<\/p>\n

Born on December 7, 1952, in Amritsar to dairy farmer parents, Davinder Singh Garcha made his international debut for the Indian hockey team at the 1979 Moscow pre-Olympic tournament.<\/p>\n

An enterprising attacker, Davinder Singh scored eight times in six matches at Moscow 1980 to help guide India to a record eighth Olympic gold after beating Spain 4-3 in the final. This was India\u2019s last gold medal in men\u2019s hockey at the Olympics.<\/p>\n

Prior to his Moscow 1980 Olympic exploits, he had finished as India\u2019s leading scorer at the Champions Trophy in Karachi, where India placed fifth.<\/p>\n

Overall, he played over 30 international matches across three tournaments and scored 19 goals for India.<\/p>\n

His achievements on the hockey<\/a> field were recognised in 2021 when he received the Dhyan Chand Award for his accomplishments.<\/p>\n

Outside the hockey field, Davinder Singh Garcha was an IPS officer and served as Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) of the Punjab Police.<\/p>\n

He was also closely associated with hockey promotion and served as president of the Olympian Surjit Hockey Society, which organises an annual hockey tournament.<\/p>\n

Davinder Singh Garcha was also president of the famous Mohinder Singh Munshi Hockey tournament, which is an annual all-India junior U19 hockey competition held in Jalandhar. It is organised in memory of Olympian Mohinder Singh Munshi, a key player in India’s 1975 World Cup-winning squad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Davinder Singh Garcha, a part of the gold medal-winning Indian hockey team at the Moscow 1980 Olympics, died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-232730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}