Olympics
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172 free Olympics trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Olympic trivia questions with answers. This Olympics quiz runs from the ancient Games at Olympia to the modern Summer and Winter Olympics: host cities, the five rings, record-breaking athletes, famous upsets and the traditions that surround the torch relay and the medal ceremony. It works for a sports round at quiz night, a classroom warm-up during the Games, or a quick test of how much you really remember from years of watching. Questions start easy enough for a casual viewer and build toward ones that will catch a devoted fan. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered, so any disagreement can be settled on the spot.
30 of 172 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The ancient Games were a religious festival held at the sanctuary of which god?
Zeus
Zeus was honoured at Olympia, where 100 oxen were sacrificed on his altar at each festival; in one telling it was his son Heracles who founded the Games.
Q 02Which Roman emperor's 393 AD decree against pagan cults is the most cited end of the ancient Games?
Theodosius I
Theodosius I, a Christian emperor, outlawed pagan festivals, and 393 is the date usually given for the end of the Games, a religious rite by then nearly twelve centuries old.
Q 03Which city hosted the inaugural modern Olympic Games?
Athens
Athens almost could not pay for the Games: money ran short until the businessman Georgios Averoff gave 920,000 drachmas to rebuild the city's ancient stadium in marble.
Q 04According to the Olympic Charter, the five interlocking Olympic rings represent the union of what?
The five continents
The five continents, with the Americas counted as one: the rings' designer first wrote only that they stood for the five parts of the world 'now won over to Olympism'.
Q 05In 2021 the IOC added which word, after an en dash, to the Olympic motto?
Together
Together was approved in July 2021, days before the delayed Tokyo Games opened; IOC president Thomas Bach said the new word was there to mean solidarity.
Q 06The first Paralympic Games, held in 1960, were open only to athletes who used what?
Wheelchairs
Wheelchairs: every competitor in 1960 had a spinal cord injury, because the Games grew out of a hospital's rehabilitation sport; blind and amputee athletes were first admitted in 1976.
Q 07Who has won more Olympic medals than anyone else, in any sport?
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps won 28 medals, 23 of them gold; he retired after the 2012 Games, then came back for Rio 2016 and added five more golds and a silver.
Q 08Which country leads the all-time Summer Olympics medal count?
United States
The United States leads the all-time table; hosts China beat it for golds in 2008, but it then finished first in the medal table at four Summer Games in a row, through 2024.
Q 09Which inhabited continent has never hosted a Summer Olympic Games?
Africa
Africa has never staged an Olympic Games; the closest yet is the Youth Olympics, which the IOC awarded to Dakar in Senegal in 2018.
Q 10Which Australian city was awarded the 2032 Summer Olympics?
Brisbane
Brisbane won without a contest: under a new selection process the IOC named it the sole preferred candidate, then confirmed it by 72 votes to 5 in July 2021.
Q 11Which sprinter lost five Sydney 2000 medals for doping?
Marion Jones
Marion Jones won three golds and two bronzes in Sydney; in 2007 she admitted lying to federal investigators about her drug use and handed back all five medals.
Q 12Which country hosted the first Winter Olympics, at Chamonix in 1924?
France
France: Chamonix billed it only as an 'International Winter Sports Week'; the IOC set up the Winter Olympics afterwards and counted Chamonix as the first.
Q 13Which American figure skater won silver at the 1994 Winter Olympics weeks after an attacker clubbed her knee?
Nancy Kerrigan
Nancy Kerrigan was struck by a man hired by the ex-husband of her rival Tonya Harding; she recovered in time and lost the gold only narrowly to Ukraine's Oksana Baiul.
Q 21Which former heavyweight champion lit the Olympic cauldron at the Atlanta 1996 opening ceremony?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali, by then living with Parkinson's, took the flame from swimmer Janet Evans after Evander Holyfield had carried it into the stadium; Ali had won Olympic boxing gold himself in 1960.
Q 22What sport combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting?
Biathlon
Biathlon grew out of Scandinavian military ski patrols; each missed target costs a penalty loop or added time, so steady shooting matters as much as fast skiing.
Q 23Where are the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) located?
Lausanne, Switzerland
Q 14Which resort, host in 1928 and 1948, was the first to stage the Winter Olympics twice?
St. Moritz
St. Moritz hosted in 1928 and again in 1948, its venues untouched by the war thanks to Swiss neutrality; Germany and Japan were not invited to the 1948 Games.
Q 15Where were the swimming races held at the 1896 Olympics?
The sea
The sea: the races were swum in the frigid Bay of Zea, and two of the four went to Hungary's Alfréd Hajós, who had turned to swimming at 13 after his father drowned in the Danube.
Q 16Which Norwegian town hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics, the first Winter Games held in a different year from the Summer Games?
Lillehammer
Lillehammer is the northernmost city to have hosted an Olympics, and its organisers reworked the plans for several venues so that building them did less harm to the landscape.
Q 17In the Parade of Nations at an Olympic opening ceremony, which team enters the stadium last?
The host nation
The host nation comes in last and Greece, as the birthplace of the Games, first; most other teams march between them in alphabetical order in the host's language.
Q 18Hélène de Pourtalès became the first female Olympic champion in 1900 as part of a winning crew in which sport?
Sailing
Sailing: she was one of the crew of the yacht Lérina, steered by her husband, so the first woman to become Olympic champion did it in a mixed team rather than a women's event.
Q 19Which Caribbean nation sent a bobsled team to the 1988 Winter Olympics, inspiring the film 'Cool Runnings'?
Jamaica
Jamaica's sled crashed on its third run in 1988, yet the country has gone on to enter almost every Winter Games since, mostly with bobsledders.
Q 20Who founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894?
Pierre de Coubertin
Pierre de Coubertin had visited the 'Olympian Games' that William Penny Brookes ran in the English town of Much Wenlock before he won over the 1894 Paris congress that created the IOC.
Lausanne, Switzerland: the IOC's founder moved its headquarters there and is buried in the city, though at his own wish his heart was laid to rest at Olympia.
Q 24Which ancient Olympic custom, called 'ekecheiria', was announced from city to city before each Games?
Olympic Truce
The Olympic Truce let athletes and spectators travel safely to Olympia and home again; the United Nations revived the idea in 1993 and has renewed the call ever since.
Q 25The ancient Olympics' four-year cycle gave Greeks a shared way to do what?
Date events
Date events: every city kept its own calendar, so historians counted the years in Olympiads instead, a common frame of reference for them all.
Q 26Which two languages are the official languages of the International Olympic Committee?
English and French
English and French are the IOC's two official languages, which is why announcements at every Games are made in both, along with the language of the host country.
Q 27The designer of the Olympic rings said their colours, with the white behind them, reproduced what?
Every nation's flag colours
Every nation's flag colours: he wrote in 1913 that the five ring colours and the white behind them together took in the flag of every country, 'without exception'.
Q 28The first symbolic Olympic flame of the modern Games burned in the Marathon Tower of which 1928 host city?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam lit a symbolic fire in a cauldron on top of its stadium's tower, the work of Dutch architect Jan Wils, and every Summer Games since has burned a flame of its own.
Q 29The first recorded Olympic champion, a cook in 776 BCE, won which event?
Footrace
Footrace: Koroibos of Elis won the stadion, a dash of about 192 metres down one length of the track and the only event at the earliest Games; 'stadium' comes from the same word.
Q 30Who in March 2025 became the first woman elected president of the IOC?
Kirsty Coventry
Kirsty Coventry, a Zimbabwean swimmer with two Olympic golds, won a seven-candidate election in the first round of voting and became the first African as well as the first woman to lead the IOC.