INDIA'S MEDAL PERFORMANCE AT OLYMPICS

India first participated at the Olympic Games in 1900, with a lone athlete (Norman Pritchard) winning two medals in athletics. The nation first sent a team to the Summer Olympic Games in 1920, and has participated in every Summer Games since then. India has also competed at several Winter Olympic Games since 1964.

Indian athletes have won a total of 20 medals, mostly in field hockey. For a period of time, India's men's field hockey team was dominant in Olympic competition, winning eleven medals in twelve Olympiads between 1928 and 1980, including six successive gold medals from 1928–1956]

Games	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1900 Paris	0	2	0	2
1904 St. Louis	did not participate
1908 London	did not participate
1912 Stockholm	did not participate
1920 Antwerp	0	0	0	0
1924 Paris	0	0	0	0
1928 Amsterdam	1	0	0	1
1932 Los Angeles	1	0	0	1
1936 Berlin	1	0	0	1
1948 London	1	0	0	1
1952 Helsinki	1	0	1	2
1956 Melbourne	1	0	0	1
1960 Rome	0	1	0	1
1964 Tokyo	1	0	0	1
1968 Mexico City	0	0	1	1
1972 Munich	0	0	1	1
1976 Montreal	0	0	0	0
1980 Moscow	1	0	0	1
1984 Los Angeles	0	0	0	0
1988 Seoul	0	0	0	0
1992 Barcelona	0	0	0	0
1996 Atlanta	0	0	1	1
2000 Sydney	0	0	1	1
2004 Athens	0	1	0	1
2008 Beijing	1	0	2	3
Total	9	4	7	20

Medals by sport

Sport	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
Field hockey	8	1	2	11
Shooting	1	1	0	2
Athletics	0	2	0	2
Wrestling	0	0	2	2
Weightlifting	0	0	1	1
Tennis	0	0	1	1
Boxing	0	0	1	1
Total	9	4	7	20

india is remarkable among nations for having won very few Olympic medals despite a population exceeding a billion, around half of them under the age of 25. Numerous explanations have been offered for the dearth, including poverty, malnutrition, neglected infrastructure, the lack of sponsorship, the theft of money and equipment, political corruption, institutional disorganization, social immobility, the predominance of cricket and other cultural factors. According to several informal statistics, India is the country in the world with the lowest number of total Olympic medals per capita (of those countries that have actually won at least one medal).According to another calculation, however, India ranks last but one, above Vietnam, in this statistic.