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Debut in London: The Flag’s First Olympics

A tricolour ribbon folding across the frame in sharp zigzags, saffron, white and green with a grey underside

Gold at the first attempt

Picture 72 folds the flag like a finish-line ribbon mid-snap — a sprinter’s image, and the right one for the most satisfying podium the flag has ever climbed.

Free India’s flag made its Olympic debut at London 1948 — the first Games the country entered as an independent nation. It could not have gone better: the hockey team took gold, defeating Britain in the final on British soil, and the tricolour rose over an Olympic podium for the first time barely a year after rising over a free country. Few flags have opened their Olympic account with quite that sentence.

Frequently asked questions

When did the Indian flag debut at the Olympics?

At the London Games of 1948 — India’s first Olympics as an independent nation.

How did that debut go?

India won hockey gold, beating Britain in the final — the tricolour’s first Olympic podium, in London itself.

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