The Olympic Games first awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals for first, second, and third place in 1904.
That happened at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri. The modern medal sequence was not yet in place at the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896: winners received silver medals and olive branches, while runners-up received copper or bronze medals. Gold was therefore not the top-place medal at those Games.
The 1904 Games introduced the familiar three-medal structure, although the event itself was unusual. It was held alongside the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, participation was heavily concentrated among American athletes, and several competitions had complicated or disputed classifications. Those issues can make early Olympic medal tables look different depending on the historical source.
Modern Olympic gold medals are generally made primarily of silver and covered with gold, not solid gold. The 1904 Games are notable because their first-place medals were made of actual gold, unlike the standard used by later Olympics.