Carl Lewis Trivia
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56 free Carl Lewis trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Carl Lewis won nine Olympic gold medals, matched Jesse Owens, held the 100 metres world record and went 65 long-jump competitions unbeaten across a decade, and somehow spent much of that time being booed. This quiz covers the whole career and the odd life around it. The easy questions ask how many golds he won, which Games saw his four-medal sweep, who beat him in Seoul before losing the medal, and which two events he ruled. From there it moves into the details: his mother the hurdler, Willingboro High, the coach who stayed with him for eighteen years, the 1980 boycott and its Congressional medal, the altitude asterisk he refused, and the first sub-10 at sea level. The harder end is for track nuts: the single 8.54 jump and passed attempts in Los Angeles, the Michael Jackson comparison that sank his endorsements, the 208th pick of the 1984 NBA draft, the 9.83 that became a 9.93, the wind-aided 9.78 at the trials, the six-man sub-10 final in Tokyo, the 8.91 that beat Beamon but did not count, Mike Powell's 8.95, the 8.85-second anchor leg in Barcelona, the 1996 relay row, the three positive stimulant tests, the vegan diet, the New Jersey Senate bid and the head coaching job in Houston. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Lewis and his championships, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Summer Olympics, Usain Bolt and track and field quizzes next.
30 of 56 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Carl Lewis won his last Olympic gold, aged 35, at which city's Games?
Atlanta
Atlanta: the world-record holder and the reigning world champion both came in nursing hamstring injuries, and Lewis's third-round jump was enough to beat them.
Q 02Carl Lewis became a UN Goodwill Ambassador in 2009 for the agency fighting what?
Hunger
Hunger: the Food and Agriculture Organization named him when more than a billion people were undernourished, and he helped launch its petition urging governments to make ending hunger their top priority.
Q 03About how many long-jump competitions in a row did Carl Lewis win over ten years?
65
65 in a row over ten years, one of the longest unbeaten runs the sport has seen; it took a world-record jump by a rival at the 1991 World Championships to end it.
Q 04Carl Lewis makes a cameo in Speed Zone, the 1989 third film in which comedy series about an illegal cross-country race?
The Cannonball Run
The Cannonball Run trilogy ended with Speed Zone, in which every regular driver is arrested before the start and the sponsors have to scrape together a new field; John Candy stars.
Q 05Who coached Lewis at university and then for the rest of his career?
Tom Tellez
Tom Tellez, a specialist in biomechanics, reworked Lewis's technique in his freshman year so he could jump without pain from an old knee injury; Lewis won the national college title that season.
Q 06Why did Lewis miss the 1980 Olympics after qualifying in two events?
The US boycott of Moscow
The US boycott of Moscow was President Carter's protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Lewis, then a college freshman, had to wait four more years for his Olympic debut.
Q 07Which tyre maker put Lewis in red high heels for its 1994 advert 'Power is nothing without control'?
Pirelli
Pirelli's point was that even a world-record sprinter is let down by the wrong equipment; 25 years later its annual report called the photograph one of the most extraordinary images in the company's history.
Q 08Which honour for America's top amateur athlete went to Lewis for his 1981 season?
Sullivan Award
The Sullivan Award followed a 1981 in which Lewis won both the 100 m and the long jump at the college championships, a double nobody had managed there for 45 years.
Q 09Whose 1968 long-jump record of 8.90 m did Lewis chase throughout his career?
Bob Beamon
Bob Beamon set it when Lewis was seven, and the boy marked the full distance out in his yard.
Q 10Which city hosted track and field's first World Championships in 1983, where Lewis won three golds?
Helsinki
Helsinki staged the sport's first full world championships; until then Olympic champions had doubled as world champions. Lewis won the 100 m, the long jump and the sprint relay.
Q 11Whose 1936 feat did Lewis match with four golds at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens had met Lewis as a boy at youth track meets; in Los Angeles Lewis won the same four events Owens had in Berlin.
Q 12Why was Lewis booed during the 1984 Olympic long jump he won?
He passed his last four jumps
He passed his last four jumps because his opening 8.54 m already led and he was saving his legs for the 200 m and relay; fans who had come to see a world record booed.
Q 13In which stadium, also the centrepiece of the 1932 Olympics, did Lewis win his four golds in 1984?
Memorial Coliseum
Q 21Which British sprinter moved up to silver when Lewis inherited the 1988 Olympic 100 m gold?
Linford Christie
Linford Christie had crossed the line third. When the winner was disqualified for a steroid, Lewis took the gold, Christie the silver and former record holder Calvin Smith the bronze.
Q 22Who beat Lewis to 200 m gold in Seoul in 19.75 s?
Joe DeLoach
Joe DeLoach was Lewis's own training partner. Lewis ran faster than his winning time of 1984 and still lost the title by four hundredths of a second.
Q 23Why did Lewis never get to run the sprint relay in Seoul?
The US team was disqualified in a heat
Memorial Coliseum: the organisers were determined to avoid costly new building, so the old Olympic stadium was pressed into service again, and the Games finished with a surplus of more than $200 million.
Q 14Lewis's agent damaged his image in 1984 by comparing him to which pop star?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson was who his manager Joe Douglas hoped Lewis could match in earning power. Douglas said he was misquoted, but the line stuck, and the big American endorsements Lewis expected after four golds did not follow.
Q 15Which NBA team drafted Lewis 208th overall in 1984, though he had never played high school or college basketball?
Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls used their last pick on him in the draft that also brought them Michael Jordan, two months after an NFL team had drafted Lewis too. He never played in either league.
Q 16Which NFL team drafted Lewis as a wide receiver in the 12th round of the 1984 draft?
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys had done it before: two decades earlier they signed Olympic 100 m champion Bob Hayes, who won a Super Bowl with them as a receiver. Lewis, who had not played college football, never joined.
Q 17Which sportswear company did Lewis sign with after Nike dropped him?
Mizuno
Mizuno is Japanese, and Japan was where his endorsements flowed: with American advertisers staying away after 1984, most of his sponsorship money came from abroad.
Q 18Which Canadian beat Lewis with a 9.83 s world record at the 1987 World Championships in Rome?
Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson had been third behind Lewis at the 1984 Olympics. After the race in Rome, Lewis said there were gold medallists at the meet who were on drugs, without naming anyone.
Q 19What did Lewis place in his father's hand at his burial in 1987?
His 1984 100 m gold medal
His 1984 100 m gold medal went with his father because the 100 m was his favourite event. 'Don't worry, I'll get another one,' Lewis told his mother, and a year later in Seoul he did.
Q 20Why did Lewis's 9.78 s at the 1988 Olympic trials not count as a world record?
It was wind-aided
It was wind-aided: the gauge showed a tailwind of 5.2 metres per second, more than double the 2.0 allowed for records, so the run counted as a trials win and nothing more.
The US team was disqualified in a heat for a botched baton change, with Lewis held back for the later rounds, so the favourites and their anchor never reached the final.
Q 24What made Lewis 100 m world-record holder on January 1, 1990?
A rival's records were annulled
A rival's records were annulled: the sprinter who had beaten Lewis in 1987 and 1988 admitted to years of steroid use, so the IAAF wiped his records and Lewis's 9.92 s from Seoul became the world record.
Q 25Which club-mate broke Lewis's 100 m world record with 9.90 s in June 1991?
Leroy Burrell
Leroy Burrell held it for just over two months before Lewis took the record back by beating him in the world final in Tokyo, 9.86 s to 9.88.
Q 26Lewis was the first man to retain the Olympic 100 m title; who was the next to do it?
Usain Bolt
Usain Bolt won it in 2008, 2012 and 2016. Lewis's own repeat came the hard way: he crossed the line second in Seoul and was given the title when the winner failed a drug test.
Q 27Who beat Lewis in the legendary 1991 Tokyo long-jump final, ending his ten-year streak?
Mike Powell
Mike Powell needed a world record to do it: Lewis produced what has been called the greatest series of jumps in history, and Powell's 8.95 m still beat him and a mark that had stood for 23 years.
Q 28Lewis won the 1988 Olympic long-jump final after starting it within an hour of doing what?
Running a 200 m heat
Running a 200 m heat: Lewis was again chasing four golds, so his events overlapped, and he still won with 8.72 m.
Q 29Lewis failed to qualify as a sprinter for the 1992 Olympics, so what put him on the relay that won gold there?
A teammate's injury
A teammate's injury: Lewis was only an alternate until Mark Witherspoon tore his Achilles tendon in the 100 m semi-finals. Lewis then anchored the US to a world record of 37.40 s.
Q 30For which team did Lewis anchor a 4 x 200 m relay world record in early 1992?
Santa Monica Track Club
He failed to make the 1992 US team in the 100 m or 200 m, finishing fourth behind Michael Johnson in the latter.