Milkha Singh (Farhan Akhtar) resides along with his family in a village called Pind. He has a great respect for his elder sister Isri Kaur (Divya Dutta) and is very close to her emotionally. Milkha loves Beeru (Sonam Kapoor), a girl from the same village and he is ready to do almost everything to impress Beeru.

With the same intention of impressing her, Milkha plans to join Army with his sports talent and without any financial support. He tries his best to become a part of Army. Milkha possesses a huge urge of food and that becomes one of the reasons for his victory in many athletic races. With the wish to get a glass of milk, Milkha goes on winning several runs. Among all this, Milkha accomplishes rich guidance from his coach, including Gurudev Singh (Pawan Malhotra), Ustaad (Prakash Raj) and his Indian coach Ranbir Singh (Yograj Singh). Enriched by the perfect guidance, Milkha keeps on achieving triumph in an array of competitions and snatching several medals to India.

Later on, Milkha takes part in Rome Olympics in the year 1960, but can not win it over a reason. At that time, great personality Jawaharlal Nehru (Dalip Tahil) advises Milkha to go to Pakistan to show his talent and beat the Pakistani players. However, an emotional rationale hinders Milkha from going to Pakistan.

Post this, Milkha decides to make himself a real winner by sharpening his flair for athletics and assessing his performance. Finally, Milkha participates in very significant competition of his life and bags a gold medal, making the country proud of him.