The Indian contingent is set to enter the upcoming Parsi Olympics 2024 with high hopes after a record-breaking return in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. India is set to send it's one of the biggest contingents for the 33rd Summer Olympics in Paris starting on July 26.
Neeraj Chopra will be the face of the Indian athletics team and is tipped to defend his Gold in the men's javelin event. Notably, only two Indians, including Chopra, have won individual golds in the Olympic Games and no one has defended in so far.
Chopra is all but expected to clinch a medal for India and it will be a big deal for the Indian contingent which has produced only three athletes with multiple individual medals so far. Chopra, Lovlina Borgohain, Mirabai Chanu and PV Sindhu won the medals in the previous Olympic Games and are hopefuls for the medals in the Paris Games.
India's first athlete to win an individual medal was Norman Pritchard who was the first Asian-born athlete to win medals in Olympic Games. Pritchard famously won two silver medals in the men's 200-meter and 200-meter hurdles in the Paris 1900 Games.
Born in Calcutta, Pritchard was the only Indian medalist, individual or team, till the men's hockey team won the gold in the 1928 Amsterdam Games. Pritchard remained India's only individual medalist in the Olympics for 112 long years.
The former wrestler Sushil Kumar became the second Indian to win multiple medals after his heroics in the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 London Games. Sushil bagged the silver medal in the 66 kg freestyle wrestling event in Beijing to become the only second Indian wrestler after Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav to win a medal.
The Delhi-born wrestler then clinched bronze in the 2012 London Games to become the first Indian to win two individual medals since independence and the first to win medals in two different editions.
India's third and last individual medals came through the ace badminton player PV Sindhu. She became the only second Indian after Saina Nehwal to win a medal in the Summer Olympics after clinching the silver in the women's singles in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
Sindhu continued her sensational rise with a bronze in the women's singles in the Tokyo Games in 2021 and is participating in the upcoming Paris Olympics 2024 as well.
