The Summer Olympics Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

Which American track-and-field athlete won nine Olympic golds between 1984 and 1996, including the long jump at four straight Games and a sprint sweep in Los Angeles that deliberately echoed Jesse Owens 48 years earlier?

Question 2

Which body, founded in 1894 and based in Lausanne, Switzerland, owns the Olympic Games, chooses the host cities, recognises the international federations and national committees, and is led by a president elected by its own co-opted members?

Question 3

Which team competed for the first time at the 2016 Rio Games, made up of displaced athletes with no country to represent, marching under the Olympic flag and, when one of them wins, honoured with the Olympic anthem?

Question 4

At which Games did Palestinian gunmen of the Black September group break into the athletes' village, kill two members of the Israeli team and take nine others hostage, all of whom died along with a police officer during a botched rescue at the airport?

Question 5

Which independent body, set up in 1999 and based in Montreal, writes the global list of banned substances and methods, harmonises the rules across all sports and countries, accredits testing laboratories, and runs the 'whereabouts' system for out-of-competition tests?

Question 6

Which Greek water-carrier and part-time runner won the first modern Olympic marathon at Athens in 1896, entering the packed home stadium to a delirious reception, with two royal princes reportedly running the final stretch alongside him?

Question 7

Which Games were the first held in South America, took place amid a national political and economic crisis and worries about the mosquito-borne Zika virus, and saw the debut of a Refugee Olympic Team competing under the Olympic flag?

Question 8

Which American won the Olympic heptathlon in both 1988 and 1992 and the long jump in 1988, and still holds the heptathlon world record set in 1988, a mark no one has approached in the decades since?

Question 9

Which American swimmer is the most decorated Olympian in history, with 28 medals, 23 of them gold, across four Games from 2004 to 2016, including a record eight golds at a single Games in Beijing in 2008?

Question 10

What symbol consists of five interlocking circles, coloured blue, yellow, black, green and red on a white ground, designed by the movement's founder in 1913 to represent the union of the then five inhabited continents and the meeting of athletes from around the world?

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About The Summer Olympics

The modern Olympic Games began in Athens in 1896 and have grown into the biggest recurring event on Earth. This quiz covers the Summer Games in eighty questions. Each describes an athlete, a host city, an event, a rule, a symbol, a moment or an official, and asks you to name it from four choices, then explains the background, the records and the controversy where there is one.

The first pack is the foundations and the biggest names: the founder Pierre de Coubertin and the first Games; the rings, the flame, the motto and the marathon; the International Olympic Committee and ancient Olympia; the parade of nations and the Paralympics; the Fosbury flop and the 1968 podium protest; and the towering champions Jesse Owens, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Nadia Comaneci, Carl Lewis and Spyridon Louis.

The second pack widens out. More great Olympians: Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zatopek, Mark Spitz, Abebe Bikila, Bob Beamon, Muhammad Ali, Simone Biles, Steve Redgrave, Jim Thorpe, Cathy Freeman, Wilma Rudolph, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Vera Caslavska, Kip Keino, and India's field-hockey dynasty and its javelin champion Neeraj Chopra. The multi-event contests, the decathlon, the modern pentathlon, the triathlon, the steeplechase and the pole vault. And the host cities and their moments: the Munich massacre, the Mexico City altitude, the Nazi Games of 1936, the Barcelona Dream Team, three-time host London, the pandemic Games of Tokyo, the twin boycotts of 1980 and 1984, the Atlanta bombing, and Rio's refugee team, plus the Olympic mascot and the long, doomed rule of amateurism.

The third pack is the institution and its troubles: the presidents Brundage and Samaranch; the Salt Lake City bribery scandal; the doping sagas of Ben Johnson, East Germany and Russia, and the anti-doping agency that grew from them; the blade-runner Oscar Pistorius and the long fight over sex testing; how women went from banned to equal; the medal table and its two ways of counting; the refugee team; the little Shropshire festival at Much Wenlock that helped inspire the whole thing; the 1906 Games struck from the record; the flag, the pictograms and the host-city vote; and the recent editions from Tokyo 1964 to the river-borne opening of Paris 2024. Because a photograph of a champion or a host stadium usually gives the answer away, images are used only where a neutral site photo or artefact does not, and every figure has been checked. Along the way the quiz clears up a few things people half-remember wrong: that Athens 1896 gave winners silver, not gold; that the marathon's odd 42.195 kilometres was fixed by a royal box in London, not by ancient tradition; that the five rings are not colour-coded to particular continents; and that Jim Thorpe, Paavo Nurmi and others lost medals to an amateurism rule that no longer exists.