Discus Throw Trivia
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44 free Discus Throw trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This discus throw trivia quiz covers the oldest throwing event in athletics from Myron's Discobolus to Mykolas Alekna's 75-metre world record. The first questions deal with the ancient Greek pentathlon, the statue that taught a Bohemian athlete how to spin, the sport's revival in Germany in the 1870s and its place at the very first modern Olympics in 1896, where a Princeton student who had never seen a real discus won the event. The middle section covers the rules and technique: the size of the circle, the landing sector, the direction of spin, why a headwind helps, and the odd Greek-style and two-handed variants once held at the Games. Then come the champions: Al Oerter's four consecutive golds, Faina Melnik's eleven world records, Gabriele Reinsch's untouchable 76.80 m, Jürgen Schult's record that stood for 37 years, the Alekna father and son, Sandra Perković, Valarie Allman, Daniel Ståhl and Jamaica's Rojé Stona. Some questions are easy for anyone who watches Olympic athletics; others will stretch dedicated track and field fans. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's articles on the discus throw, its Olympic history and the athletes themselves.
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The discus was part of which ancient Greek multi-event competition, dated to at least 708 BC?
The pentathlon
It remains part of the modern decathlon, though it is not in the modern pentathlon.
Q 02Which sculptor made the famous fifth-century-BC statue of a discus thrower, the Discobolus?
Myron
Myron's original bronze is lost, so his thrower is known only through copies the Romans made centuries later, such as the marble one dug up in Rome in 1781.
Q 03Which dictator bought the Palombara Discobolus, a prized Roman copy of the ancient discus thrower, in 1938?
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler paid five million lire after Italy's foreign minister overrode objections to the sale, and the statue did not go back to Rome until 1948.
Q 04The Townley Discobolus, excavated at Hadrian's Villa in 1790, is now held where?
The British Museum
The British Museum bought it with the rest of Charles Townley's marbles in 1805; its head had been restored the wrong way, yet Townley insisted his was the better copy.
Q 05Christian Georg Kohlrausch, who revived discus throwing as a sport in Germany around 1880, did which job?
Gymnastics teacher
Gymnastics teacher: he revived the ancient event with his own pupils at a school in Magdeburg, working out with them by experiment how a discus could be thrown.
Q 06František Janda-Suk, who pioneered the spinning discus throw, won Olympic silver in 1900 for which team?
Bohemia
Bohemia: Janda-Suk worked out his spin by studying the pose of an ancient Greek statue of a thrower, and the rotation he introduced is how everyone throws today.
Q 07Robert Garrett won the discus at the first modern Olympics in 1896 and which other event?
Shot put
Shot put: that was the Princeton captain's real event, and he took up the discus only because a professor suggested he try it for the revived Games.
Q 08What was wrong with the practice discus that the 1896 Olympic champion had made from ancient descriptions?
Far too heavy
Far too heavy: accounts put it at 20 to 30 pounds, so he gave up on the event until he picked up the real thing in Athens, found it far lighter, and entered after all.
Q 09At the 1900 Olympics, what stopped the 1896 champion from recording a legal discus mark?
All his throws hit trees
All his throws hit trees: the landing area in Paris was little more than a lane between two rows of them, so a thrower had to be accurate as well as long.
Q 10Which epic describes a discus contest at the funeral games for Patroclus?
The Iliad
The Iliad: Achilles stages the games for his dead friend, and the throwers hurl a rough lump of iron that the winner gets to keep as several years' supply of metal.
Q 111928 discus champion Halina Konopacka was which country's first Olympic champion?
Poland
Poland's first Olympic champion always threw in a red beret, and in 1939 she helped her husband, a former treasury minister, get the national bank's gold out of the country to France.
Q 12In Greek myth, which hero fulfilled a prophecy by accidentally killing his grandfather Acrisius with a discus?
Perseus
Perseus, in one telling, threw it at games in Larissa, the very place his grandfather had gone to escape the oracle's warning that a grandson would kill him.
Q 13After a throw, a discus thrower must leave the circle from which part?
Rear
Rear: a thrower must stay inside until the discus lands and then step out of the back of the circle, which is why they fight so hard for balance after letting go.
Q 21Which injury did Al Oerter compete through to win his third gold in Tokyo in 1964?
Torn rib cartilage
Torn rib cartilage: he did it in practice less than a week before the Games and doctors told him not to throw, yet he won with an Olympic record while wearing a neck brace.
Q 22Which sprinter matched Al Oerter's feat of four straight Olympic golds in one track and field event?
Carl Lewis
Carl Lewis did it not in a sprint but in the long jump, winning in 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996 to equal the record exactly 28 years after Oerter set it.
Q 23Al Oerter threw his lifetime best at 43 in a comeback for which boycotted Olympics?
Moscow
Q 14A discus thrower builds up speed by spinning across the circle about how many times before letting go?
One and a half turns
One and a half turns: the spin carries the thrower from the back of the circle to the front, building from slow to fast before the discus is slung off the index finger.
Q 15Against most people's instinct, which conditions help a well-thrown discus fly farthest?
A moderate headwind
A moderate headwind: the discus is shaped to generate lift like a wing, so air flowing over it holds it up for longer, which is why throwers seek out famously breezy venues.
Q 16What does the fast spin a thrower puts on a discus at release do for its flight?
Keeps it steady in the air
Keeps it steady in the air: a spinning discus behaves like a gyroscope and holds its angle, which lets its wing-like shape go on generating lift for most of the flight.
Q 17In the 'Greek-style' discus at the 1908 Olympics, athletes threw from where?
A raised pedestal
A raised pedestal, with no spinning allowed: organisers thought they were copying the ancients, but scholars say the rules came from a mistranslated text, and the event was never held again.
Q 18What unusual discus variant was contested at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics?
Two-handed throwing
Two-handed throwing meant three throws with each hand, the best right and left marks added together; Finland's Armas Taipale won it a day after taking the regular title.
Q 19The women's discus at the 1952 Helsinki Games produced the first-ever Olympic gold medal for which country?
Soviet Union
Soviet Union: Nina Romashkova won it at the country's first Olympics, and four years later a London shoplifting charge over a few hats put her at the centre of a Cold War row.
Q 20Al Oerter's run of four straight Olympic discus golds began in 1956 in which Australian city?
Melbourne
Melbourne: he had never won a major international title and was not the favourite, but answered with the longest throw of his career, a habit he repeated at later Games.
Moscow: he finished fourth at the American trials in 1980, a dozen years after his last gold, yet his best throw that season went farther than any of his four Olympic winners.
Q 24How did Al Oerter, a painter in retirement, make his 'Impact' series of abstracts?
Throwing a discus into wet paint
Throwing a discus into wet paint: the splashes made the picture, and in 2006 he founded Art of the Olympians to exhibit work by fellow athletes.
Q 25Who holds the women's discus world record of 76.80 m, set in 1988?
Gabriele Reinsch
Gabriele Reinsch added more than two metres to the record with that one throw, yet at the Seoul Olympics that September she could finish only seventh.
Q 26What keeps Martina Hellmann's 78.14 m of 1988, the longest women's discus throw known, off the record books?
An unofficial meeting
An unofficial meeting: she threw it in a closed session at an East German training camp, then won Olympic gold in Seoul weeks later with a throw almost six metres shorter.
Q 27Before it fell in 2024, Jürgen Schult's 1986 discus world record held which distinction?
Oldest men's record
Oldest men's record in athletics: it had stood for almost 38 years, so long that Mykolas Alekna, who finally beat it, was born 16 years after Schult threw it.
Q 28Discus thrower Piotr Małachowski auctioned the silver medal he won at the 2016 Olympics to pay for what?
A boy's cancer treatment
A boy's cancer treatment: days after the final he put the medal up for sale to help a three-year-old with a rare eye cancer travel abroad for care, and it quickly found a buyer.
Q 29Away from the circle, two-time Olympic discus champion Virgilijus Alekna worked in which job?
Prime minister's bodyguard
Prime minister's bodyguard: the towering Lithuanian protected his country's head of government during his years at the top, then became a politician himself, elected to parliament in 2016.
Q 30Where did Mykolas Alekna set his 2024 world record of 74.35 m?
Ramona, Oklahoma
Ramona, Oklahoma: the town of barely 500 people is nicknamed Throw Town for its helpful winds, and all six of his throws that day flew beyond 70 metres.