70 free Hardest Sports trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
These are the hardest sports trivia questions on BrainPickle: sixty-two multiple-choice stumpers built for people who already know the easy stuff. Nobody here is asked how many players are on a basketball team. Instead you get the pitcher who threw a no-hitter while tripping, the town where Wilt scored 100, the goalie who was first to shoot and score, the marathon runner dosed with rat poison, and the record that Wayne Gretzky would still hold if he had never scored a goal. The set roams across baseball, American football, soccer, basketball, hockey, cricket, tennis, golf, boxing, athletics, cycling, rowing, snooker and the Olympics, so a specialist in one sport will still hit walls in another. Difficulty climbs from tough to genuinely expert; a strong pub-quiz player should expect to miss a third of these. Every answer was checked against a primary source, mostly the encyclopaedia entry for the athlete, match or record in question, and every question shows its source after you answer. Use it for a hard round at trivia night, to settle arguments, or just to find out how deep your sports knowledge really goes.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pitcher threw a 1970 no-hitter against the Padres while, by his own account, on LSD?
Dock Ellis
Ellis later said he thought it was an off day and only learned he was pitching that afternoon. He walked eight batters and hit one, but no Padre got a hit.
Q 02Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962 was played in which unlikely city?
Hershey, Pennsylvania
The Warriors played several 'home' games away from Philadelphia that season. The arena was about half full, and no film of the game has ever been found.
Q 03How did Fred Lorz briefly 'win' the marathon at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics before being found out?
He rode part of the course in a car
Lorz dropped out with cramps at nine miles, hitched a ride, and started running again when the car broke down at mile 19. He was crowned before the truth came out.
Q 041904 Olympic marathon winner Thomas Hicks was kept going with brandy, egg whites and which poison?
Strychnine
In small doses the rat poison acts as a stimulant, and it was legal at the time. Hicks had to be carried across the line and nearly died.
Q 05After the 1980 'Miracle on Ice', which team did the US beat to clinch the gold medal?
Finland
The Soviet game was not the final: it was a medal-round game. Two days later the Americans trailed Finland after two periods and scored three times in the third.
Q 06Who is the only golfer to win all four majors of his era in one calendar year, in 1930?
Bobby Jones
He did it as an amateur, retired at 28, and then co-founded the Masters, which is why the pre-1934 Grand Slam has a different set of four events.
Q 07The only perfect game in World Series history was thrown in 1956 by which Yankees pitcher?
Don Larsen
It came in Game 5 against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Larsen had been knocked out in the second inning of Game 2 a few days earlier.
Q 08What was the score of the fifth set when John Isner finally beat Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon in 2010?
70–68
The match ran 11 hours and 5 minutes across three days. Wimbledon later introduced a final-set tie-break so it can never happen again.
Q 09Whose 400 not out against England in 2004 remains the highest individual score in Test cricket?
Brian Lara
He also holds the first-class record of 501 not out, set for Warwickshire against Durham in 1994.
Q 10Roger Bannister was the first man to run a four-minute mile. Who was the second, just 46 days later?
John Landy
He did it in Turku in a world-record 3:57.9. The two then met in the 'Miracle Mile' at the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver.
Q 11When Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990, what were the odds against him?
42 to 1
Douglas's mother had died 23 days before the fight. He put Tyson down in the tenth round, the first knockout loss of Tyson's career.
Q 12How many teams took part in the first FIFA World Cup in 1930?
13
Only four European sides made the sea voyage to South America. The hosts beat Argentina 4–2 in the final in front of 68,346 people.
Q 13In 1987 Ron Hextall became the first NHL goaltender to do what?
Shoot the puck into the opponent's net for a goal
He hit an empty net against Boston. The next season he did it again in the playoffs, another first.
Q 21Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in a single game in January 2006. Who were the opponents?
Toronto Raptors
The Lakers trailed by 18 in the third quarter and won 122–104. Bryant scored 55 of his points after halftime.
Q 22Jim Thorpe was stripped of his 1912 Olympic medals for having been paid to play which sport?
Baseball
He earned meagre pay in the Eastern Carolina League in 1909 and 1910. The IOC restored his medals in 1983 and named him sole champion in 2022.
Q 23Michael Jordan went third in the 1984 NBA draft. Who was picked second, one spot ahead of him?
Sam Bowie
Portland already had Clyde Drexler at guard and took the Kentucky centre. Hakeem Olajuwon went first to Houston.
Q 14Which player holds the world professional career home run record with 868?
Sadaharu Oh
He hit them all for the Yomiuri Giants over 22 seasons, using a one-legged 'flamingo' stance, and finished more than 100 clear of the MLB record.
Q 15Who broke Bob Beamon's 8.90 m long jump world record after almost 23 years?
Mike Powell
Beamon had beaten the old record by 55 centimetres. The record fell at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, in a duel with Carl Lewis.
Q 16The 'Maracanazo' of 1950 saw Brazil lose the World Cup's deciding match at home to which country?
Uruguay
Brazil needed only a draw in front of an official 173,850 spectators. Uruguay won 2–1 and lifted the trophy for the second time.
Q 17Who is the only driver to win the Formula One World Championship in a car bearing his own name?
Jack Brabham
He did it in 1966, his third title. McLaren and Gurney each won a race in their own cars but never a championship.
Q 18Australia set the record for the largest win in international soccer in 2001, 31–0, against which team?
American Samoa
Archie Thompson scored 13 goals in the match, itself a record. Two days earlier Australia had beaten Tonga 22–0.
Q 19How many consecutive games did Cal Ripken Jr. play to set the major-league iron-man record?
2,632
He passed Lou Gehrig's 2,130 on September 6, 1995, and kept going for three more seasons before voluntarily sitting out.
Q 20Who won the very first Tour de France in 1903?
Maurice Garin
The race was six stages over 2,428 km and was invented to boost sales of the newspaper L'Auto.
Q 24How long did Ronnie O'Sullivan take to compile snooker's fastest-ever maximum 147 break in 1997?
5 minutes 8 seconds
It came at the World Championship against Mick Price and is listed as a Guinness World Record. He earned £165,000 for it.
Q 25Who set the NFL single-season rushing record of 2,105 yards in 1984?
Eric Dickerson
He did it for the Los Angeles Rams in his second season. Peterson came within nine yards in 2012.
Q 26Whose 84-year-old record for hits in a season did Ichiro Suzuki break in 2004?
George Sisler
Ichiro finished with 262, five past the 257 Sisler had set in 1920, and it gave him single-season hit records in both MLB and Japan.
Q 27Which country gave the 1992 Dream Team its closest game, in the Olympic gold-medal final?
Croatia
Closest is relative: the score was 117–85. The Americans won their eight games by an average of about 44 points.
Q 28Who is the only tennis player to complete a calendar-year 'Golden Slam'?
Steffi Graf
She did it in 1988, beating Gabriela Sabatini in the Seoul Olympic final after sweeping the majors.
Q 29Who is the only male athlete to win both the 200 m and 400 m at the same Olympic Games?
Michael Johnson
He did it in Atlanta in 1996 wearing golden Nike spikes, running the 200 m in a world-record 19.32 seconds.
Q 30Who scored the fastest World Cup goal to that point, 10.8 seconds into a 2002 match?
Hakan Şükür
It came in the third-place play-off against South Korea, which Turkey won 3–2. Bryan Robson's 1982 strike had held the record at 27 seconds.