Called on by director Rajkumar Hirani to train Shah Rukh Khan and Dunki’s supporting actors for a running sequence, athletics coach Melwyn Crasto found relief in the fact that the actor did not need to appear technically sound. “He had to participate in a 400-metre sprint, and I was told that he did not need to have the precise form. All the runners were around 50 to 55 years old. And while we had access to a running track, the scene was set in a Punjab village, amid a mela, where, along with the stalls, [an area] for games was present. It was a muddy and stony track that they had to run on.”

Introduced to Khan as the man who would choreograph the sequence and train him for the part, Crasto recalls the actor’s first reaction. “He told me that he was a good sportsman when he was in school, and that he used to run [100 metres in] 12 seconds, and was the champion for about six years. I was impressed, because not many can pull off a race in such a short interval. The record for a 100-metre sprint by an Indian is, after all, 10 seconds,” he says, making a case for Khan’s athletic levels while revealing that he’d pull off “race after race” while filming the part.