India has just won 0.17% of total medals presented at the Olympics

When the modern Olympic Games began in 1896 medals started to be given to successful olympian competitors. However, gold medals were not awarded at the inaugural Olympics in 1896 in Athens, Greece. The winners were instead given a silver medal and an olive branch, while runners-up received a laurel branch and a copper or bronze medal. In 1900, most winners received cups or trophies instead of medals.

The custom of the sequence of gold, silver, and bronze for the first three places dates from the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri in the United States. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has retroactively assigned gold, silver and bronze medals to the three best-placed athletes in each event of the 1896 and 1900 Games. If there is a tie for any of the top three places all competitors are entitled to receive the appropriate medal according to IOC rules. Some combat sports (such as boxing, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling) award two bronze medals per competition, resulting in, overall, more bronze medals being awarded than the other colours.

If we go by the count of medals from 1896 Athens to 2016 Rio Olympic games, we can see a total number of 15,683 medals have been distributed in the Summer Games with 5,116 gold, 5,080 silver, and 5,487 bronze medals. However, despite such a mammoth total, India has won only 28 medals in the Olympics so far - 9 gold, 7 silver, and 12 bronze medals. Which barely makes it to 0.17% of the total medal count. A country like the USA has won 2,523 medals, whereas China has won 546 medals.

Of the 28 medals India has won so far at the Olympics, 11 have come from hockey, 5 from wrestling, 4 from shooting, 2 in badminton, 2 from athletics in the pre-Independence era by Norman Pritchard, 1 in tennis, and 1 in weightlifting.