[10][11] Second place silver medals were awarded in shooting, rowing, yachting, tennis, gymnastics, sabre, fencing, equestrian and athletics.

[15] The custom of the sequence of gold, silver, and bronze for the first three places in all events 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.

Specifications for the medals are developed along with the National Olympic Committee (NOC) hosting the Games, though the IOC has brought in some set rules:[17][18] The first Olympic medals in 1896 were designed by French sculptor Jules-Clément Chaplain and depicted Zeus holding Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, on the obverse and the Acropolis on the reverse.

[6][24][25] The obverse brought back Nike but this time as the main focus, holding a winner's crown and palm with a depiction of the Colosseum in the background.

[6] Cassioli's design continued to inspire the obverse of the medal for many more years, though recreated each time, with the Olympic host and numeral updated.

The obverse remained true to the Trionfo design until the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, where the IOC allowed an updated version to be created.

[6][28] The Sydney Organising Committee decided to continue with the design as it was, noting that there was insufficient time to complete another version and that it would be too costly.

[18] After 76 years a new style by designer Elena Votsi depicting the Panathenaic Stadium was introduced at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

The German Olympic Committee, Nationales Olympisches Komitee für Deutschland, was the first Summer Games organisers to elect to change the reverse of the medal.

The 1972 design was created by Gerhard Marcks, an artist from the Bauhaus, and features mythological twins Castor and Pollux.

[30] Since then the Organising Committee of the host city has been given the freedom of the design of the reverse, with the IOC giving final approval.

For three events in a row, hosts of the Winter Games included different materials in the medals: glass (1992), sparagmite (1994), and lacquer (1998).

The victory podium was introduced upon the personal instruction in 1931 of Henri de Baillet-Latour, who had seen one used at the 1930 British Empire Games.

[47] At the 1932 Winter Olympics, medals were awarded in the closing ceremony, with athletes for each event in turn mounting the first-ever podium.

At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the "medals plaza" was popularized as a way for the public to see presentations that would have otherwise taken place at far-flung, low-capacity or high-altitude venues and to have an evening program that often included musical performances.