New Delhi: The stage is set for blockbuster sporting action as athletes from 206 countries get ready to compete in 329 events across 32 sports disciplines at the Paris Olympics 2024. The 33rd edition of the Summer Olympics will take place in Paris, and in other parts of France from July 26 to August 11. The action, though, will begin on Wednesday, July 24 with pool ties in football, rugby sevens, handball and archery.
India will send a 118-strong contingent to France, including 48 women athletes, across 16 sports. All eyes will be on men’s javelin throw champion Neeraj Chopra, who will lead a 30-member athletics team. Chopra will be gunning to defend his javelin title with another strong showing at the quadrennial event.
Chopra scripted history at the Tokyo 2020 Games by becoming the second Indian to win an individual Olympic gold after Abhinav Bindra, who won the men’s 10 m air rifle title in the 2008 Beijing Games.
While Bindra is the first individual gold medallist for India at the Olympics, who won India’s first-ever gold at the Olympics and when?
When did India win its first Olympic gold and in which sport?
India won its first Olympic gold medal at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The men’s field hockey team claimed the coveted prize by defeating hosts Netherlands 3-0 in the final. The victory came under the leadership of Jaipal Singh Munda, a politician, writer, and sportsman and began a remarkable streak for India that continued through the 1956 Games. India, astonishingly, didn’t concede a single goal in the campaign.
The India and Netherlands hockey teams pose together for a group portrait ahead of the final of the Men’s Field Hocket at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 1928. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
India is the most successful nation in the history of men’s field hockey at the Olympics, having won eight goal medals, including six in a row between 1928 and 1956.
After the incredible high, the Indian men’s hockey team slumped to a dismal low at the Olympic Games until the Tokyo 2020 Games, where the team clinched bronze to end a 41-year-old medal drought.
While Abhinav Bindra is the first individual gold medallist for India at the Olympics, in which sports discipline India won its first-ever gold at the Olympics and when? Sports Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
