Hurdles Trivia
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49 free Hurdles trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hurdling is sprinting with ten obstacles in the way, and this quiz covers the whole event: how high the barriers are and how far apart, why they are weighted, the three-step rhythm of the sprint hurdles and the 13-stride pattern of the 400 m, the Olympic history back to 1896, and the champions who defined it, from Harrison Dillard and Fanny Blankers-Koen to Edwin Moses, Colin Jackson, Sally Gunnell, Liu Xiang, Karsten Warholm and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Easy questions ask how many hurdles are in a race and who holds the women's 400 m record; harder ones dig into the L-shaped hurdle of 1935, the 80 m event women ran until 1968, the 200 m low hurdles of 1900, the man who ran under 13 seconds first and then played for the 49ers, and the physics major who won 122 races in a row. It suits athletics fans, coaches, school sports days and any Olympic-year quiz. For the wider sport, BrainPickle's track and field quiz picks up where this one leaves off. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on hurdling, the three Olympic hurdle events and the athletes named, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many hurdles are there in a standard 110 m, 100 m or 400 m hurdles race?
Ten
Ten, whatever the distance. Indoor 60 m races use the first five barriers at exactly the same spacing, so a sprint hurdler's stride pattern never changes between seasons.
Q 02The men's sprint hurdles race is 110 m because which country rounded up the British 120 yards in 1888?
France
France turned 120 yards, which is 109.7 m, into a round 110, and the spare foot was simply added after the last hurdle: the run-in is still that much longer than the run-up.
Q 03What penalty does a hurdler face for accidentally knocking over a hurdle?
No penalty
No penalty applies. The barriers are weighted so that hitting one costs speed, which is punishment enough; only knocking one down on purpose or with a hand brings disqualification.
Q 04Which American, days after winning the 1992 Olympic 100 m, led the hurdles final until she hit the last barrier?
Gail Devers
Gail Devers stumbled across the line in fifth and never did win an Olympic hurdles medal, though she took a hat-trick of world titles in the event.
Q 05What design innovation of 1935 made hurdles safer?
An L-shaped hurdle that tips forward when hit
An L-shaped hurdle that tips forward when hit falls out of the runner's path, which cut injuries, though clipping one still costs speed.
Q 06Hurdler Lolo Jones, twice a world indoor champion, went on to compete at the Winter Olympics in which sport?
Bobsled
Bobsled: she pushed a two-woman sled as brakewoman at the 2014 Games, six years after clipping the ninth hurdle while leading the Olympic final and fading to seventh.
Q 07Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, born in South Carolina, won the Tokyo Olympic 100 m hurdles representing which team?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is her mother's homeland, which made her eligible, and her gold was only the second in its Olympic history; her brother Robert Quinn chose the NFL instead.
Q 08Lashinda Demus finally received her London 2012 hurdles gold in 2024, at a ceremony in front of which landmark?
The Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was the backdrop, during the Paris Games, a dozen years late: the Russian who beat her in London was only later disqualified for doping.
Q 09Which American was disqualified from the 2022 world 110 m hurdles final for reacting one-thousandth of a second too fast?
Devon Allen
Devon Allen came out of his blocks 0.099 seconds after the gun, inside the 0.1-second limit, and was out nine days before he was due at his first NFL training camp.
Q 10How many strides do sprint hurdlers take between each hurdle?
Three
Three, for women as well as men. An odd count brings the same lead leg to every barrier, so the whole race runs to one rhythm.
Q 11Alvin Kraenzlein, hurdles champion at the 1900 Olympics, popularised what?
Straight front leg
A straight front leg let him take hurdles in his stride instead of jumping them; an English student had tried it in the 1880s, but Kraenzlein perfected it and made it the norm.
Q 12Which Cuban broke the 110 m hurdles world record with 12.87 in 2008?
Dayron Robles
Dayron Robles won Olympic gold in Beijing two months later, but in 2011 he crossed the line first in the world final and was disqualified for obstructing a rival.
Q 13The 110 m hurdles has featured at every modern Olympics since the first, held in which city?
Athens
Athens saw a final with only two starters: the other two qualifiers did not line up, one of them the man who went on to win the pole vault.
Q 21Who won the 2024 Paris Olympic 110 m hurdles and set a 7.27 indoor 60 m hurdles record?
Grant Holloway
Grant Holloway, already a three-time world champion, had been beaten into silver in the Tokyo final three years earlier; Paris gave him the one title he lacked.
Q 22Who is the only man to win Olympic gold in both the 100 m sprint and the 110 m hurdles?
Harrison Dillard
Harrison Dillard, a world-record hurdler, failed to make the 1948 team in his own event, squeezed in as third man in the 100 m and won it, then took the hurdles title four years later.
Q 23Whose 12.12 from 2022 was the women's 100 m hurdles world record until 2026?
Tobi Amusan
Q 14Which American won the first Olympic women's hurdles title, over 80 metres, at the 1932 Los Angeles Games?
Babe Didrikson
Babe Didrikson won it in a world-record 11.7 seconds and took javelin gold and high jump silver that week, then switched sports and became the best woman golfer of her era.
Q 15The low hurdles, last run at the Olympics in 1904, gave which sprinter a world record in 1935?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens ran the 220-yard low hurdles in 22.6 seconds at Ann Arbor, one of six world records he broke or equalled within a single hour that afternoon.
Q 16Who was the first man to run the 110 m hurdles in under 13 seconds?
Renaldo Nehemiah
Renaldo Nehemiah ran 12.93 in Zürich in 1981, a year after the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics had denied the world's best hurdler his likeliest gold medal.
Q 17Which NFL team did the first sub-13-second hurdler play for as a wide receiver from 1982 to 1985?
San Francisco 49ers
San Francisco 49ers. He gave up hurdling while still the world record holder to join them, then came back to the track in 1986 and earned world rankings four more times.
Q 18Which British hurdler's 12.91 world record of 1993 stood for nearly 13 years?
Colin Jackson
Colin Jackson set it while winning the world title in Stuttgart, yet Olympic gold always escaped him: a silver in 1988 was his only medal from four Games.
Q 19Which Chinese hurdler won the 2004 Olympic 110 m title and broke the world record in 2006?
Liu Xiang
Liu Xiang went to the 2008 Beijing Games as defending champion and national hero, then walked off injured after a false start in his first heat, leaving his coach and much of the crowd in tears.
Q 20Who set a 110 m hurdles world record of 12.80 in Brussels in 2012, a mark that stood until 2026?
Aries Merritt
Aries Merritt fell ill the following year with a genetic kidney disorder, yet won a world bronze medal in 2015 just four days before receiving a kidney from his sister.
Tobi Amusan of Nigeria ran it in a world championship semi-final, then went quicker still in the final, 12.06, only for a tailwind over the limit to rule that one out as a record.
Q 24Whose 1988 world record of 12.21 in the 100 m hurdles stood for almost 28 years?
Yordanka Donkova
Yordanka Donkova, who lost three fingers of her right hand as a child, saw a Bulgarian clubmate take the record in 1987, then won it back weeks before her Olympic gold in Seoul.
Q 25Who broke the 100 m hurdles world record in July 2016, two weeks after failing to qualify for the Rio Olympics?
Kendra Harrison
Kendra Harrison was only sixth at her national trials, then ran 12.20 in London to break a record from 1988, with the three women who took the Olympic places trailing in behind her.
Q 26Which country swept the women's 100 m hurdles medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics?
United States
United States: Brianna Rollins, Nia Ali and Kristi Castlin took all three medals, after national trials so fierce that the woman who broke the world record that summer finished only sixth.
Q 27Which "Flying Housewife" won four golds at the 1948 Olympics, including the 80 m hurdles?
Fanny Blankers-Koen
Fanny Blankers-Koen, a 30-year-old mother of two, had also set world records in the high jump and long jump, but the rules let her enter only three individual events.
Q 28Which Australian won seven Olympic medals between 1948 and 1956, including two golds in the 80 m hurdles?
Shirley Strickland
Shirley Strickland may have earned an eighth: a photo of the 1948 200 m finish, found in 1975, suggests she was third, not fourth, but she opposed taking her rival's medal away.
Q 29Nawal El Moutawakel's 1984 hurdles win was the first Olympic gold for which country?
Morocco
Morocco had its first Olympic champion thanks to an upset in the first women's Olympic 400 m hurdles: a boycott kept away the Soviet and East German hurdlers who had swept the medals at the previous year's world championships.
Q 30Edwin Moses won how many consecutive 400 m hurdles races between 1977 and 1987?
122
122 races without defeat, heats included, across almost ten years; in the middle of the streak the 1980 boycott cost the unbeatable man an Olympic gold he could hardly have lost.