Paris 2024 Olympics
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50 free Paris 2024 Olympics trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Paris 2024 was the Games that left the stadium. Athletes arrived by boat along the Seine, the cauldron floated over the Tuileries under a helium balloon, surfers competed 15,000 kilometres away in Tahiti, and every medal carried a hexagon of iron cut from the Eiffel Tower. It was also the first Olympics with equal numbers of men and women. These 50 questions range across the whole fortnight: the host-city vote in Lima, the venues from Marseille to Teahupo'o, Thomas Jolly's rain-soaked opening ceremony and Céline Dion's closer, the Phryges mascots, breaking's debut, Formula Kite and kayak cross, the Village's missing air conditioning, and the medal table where the United States and China both won 40 golds. Star turns from Léon Marchand, Zhang Yufei and refugee boxer Cindy Ngamba get their own questions. Easy questions stick to the headlines; the hard tier asks who designed the medals, which 1984 Games last split the ceremonies across two venues, and what the closing ceremony was called. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something either way.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sport made its Olympic debut at Paris 2024?
Breaking
Breaking was the one new sport in Paris, since the other three had arrived at Tokyo 2020, and it may prove a one-off: it is not on the programme for the 2028 Games.
Q 02Which French football great ran the Olympic flame through Paris in the opening film of the 2024 ceremony?
Zinedine Zidane
Zinedine Zidane dashed through the streets and into the Métro with the flame, then reappeared at the end of the night to hand it to a Spaniard, Rafael Nadal.
Q 03Which animated characters starred in an underwater sketch made for the Paris 2024 opening ceremony?
The Minions
The Minions got the slot as icons of French cinema: the Despicable Me films are animated at Illumination's Paris studio, and French director Pierre Coffin voices the creatures himself.
Q 04Which other city was the last rival left when the IOC decided to award 2024 and 2028 together?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles and Paris were the last bidders standing after rivals pulled out over costs, so the IOC kept both: the Americans agreed to wait until 2028 in return for extra IOC funding.
Q 05Paris's previous Olympics, in 1924, are the setting of which film?
Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire follows British sprinters Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell at the 1924 Paris Games; the stadium where they ran, at Colombes, was brought back in 2024 to host the hockey.
Q 06Where were the Paris 2024 surfing events held?
Teahupo'o, Tahiti
Teahupo'o, Tahiti, was chosen over Biarritz and other mainland beaches for its famously heavy wave, although it lies some 15,000 km from Paris, farther than any Olympic event had been held from its host city.
Q 07Which Mediterranean city hosted the sailing events of Paris 2024?
Marseille
Marseille also welcomed the Olympic flame to France: it crossed the Mediterranean from Athens aboard the Belem, a three-masted sailing ship launched in 1896.
Q 08Which nation topped the medal table at Paris 2024?
United States
The United States drew level with China on 40 golds by winning the last final of the Games, the women's basketball, by a single point, and took first place on silver medals, 44 to 27.
Q 09Which gymnast won three golds at Paris 2024, three years after pulling out of most of her events in Tokyo?
Simone Biles
Simone Biles took the team, all-around and vault titles, having withdrawn in Tokyo with the 'twisties', a loss of air awareness that makes twisting skills dangerous.
Q 10Which nation finished third on the Paris 2024 gold-medal table, with 20 golds?
Japan
Japan's 20 golds put it third, yet its 45 medals in all ranked only sixth, behind Great Britain, France and Australia as well as the top two.
Q 11Which sport gave hosts France their first gold of Paris 2024?
Rugby sevens
Rugby sevens struck first: Antoine Dupont came off the bench in the final to score two tries and set up another in a 28–7 win over the defending champions, Fiji.
Q 12Cindy Ngamba won the Refugee Olympic Team's first-ever medal at Paris 2024 in which sport?
Boxing
Boxing awards bronze to both losing semi-finalists, so Ngamba, born in Cameroon and based in Britain, was sure of a medal the moment she won her quarter-final.
Q 13Julien Alfred's 100 m gold over Sha'Carri Richardson was which Caribbean nation's first Olympic medal?
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia had been to seven Games without a medal before Alfred won in a Paris downpour; she went on to add silver in the 200 m.
Q 21Which singer closed the Paris 2024 opening ceremony?
Céline Dion
Céline Dion sang Édith Piaf's 'Hymne à l'amour' as the cauldron rose into the night, her first performance since announcing in 2022 that she has stiff-person syndrome.
Q 22Bespectacled American Stephen Nedoroscik became a viral star of Paris 2024 as a specialist on which gymnastics apparatus?
Pommel horse
Pommel horse was his only event: he waited through the whole team final, took off his glasses and delivered the routine that sealed the US men's first team medal in 16 years.
Q 23Paris 2024's opening ceremony showed Philippe Katerine painted blue as which Greek god?
Dionysus
Dionysus, god of wine, was the organisers' answer when the banquet tableau around him was taken for a parody of the Last Supper; they apologised to anyone who had been offended.
Q 14Which American sprinter won the men's 100 m at Paris 2024 by five-thousandths of a second?
Noah Lyles
Noah Lyles trailed Jamaica's Kishane Thompson until the final stride and needed a photo finish to be named the winner; all eight finalists crossed the line within 0.12 seconds.
Q 15Paris 2024's 9.5 million ticket sales beat a record set at which Games?
Atlanta 1996
Atlanta 1996 had sold 8.3 million tickets; Paris passed that total as crowds returned in force, three years after Tokyo's events were held behind closed doors because of the pandemic.
Q 16Each Paris 2024 medal is set with a hexagonal piece of which Paris landmark?
Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower iron, removed during past refurbishments and kept for years in a secret warehouse, was cut into hexagons, a nod to the six-sided shape of mainland France.
Q 17Which pole vaulter, with gold already won at Paris 2024, went on to break his own world record?
Armand Duplantis
Armand Duplantis of Sweden had the title won at six metres, raised the Olympic record to 6.10 m and then cleared 6.25 m, one centimetre above his previous world best.
Q 18Which Greek goddess appears on the back of every Paris 2024 Olympic medal?
Nike
Nike, the goddess of victory, is a fixture: every Summer Games medal since Athens 2004 has shown her at the Panathenaic Stadium, where the modern Olympics began, and Paris kept the tradition.
Q 19The trackside bell that new Olympic champions rang at Paris 2024 was later installed in which landmark?
Notre-Dame
Notre-Dame received the bell as a gift from the organisers a month before the cathedral reopened after its 2019 fire; it now hangs above the altar and is rung during Mass.
Q 20Who was the artistic director of the Paris 2024 opening ceremony?
Thomas Jolly
Thomas Jolly, a theatre director, staged the show along the river instead of in a stadium; when one tableau was taken for a parody of the Last Supper, he said mocking religion had never been his intention.
Q 24Which French heavy metal band performed at the Paris 2024 opening ceremony?
Gojira
Gojira played a French Revolution song from the windows of the prison that once held Marie Antoinette, with an opera singer and a headless queen, and the performance later won a Grammy.
Q 25At Paris 2024, judoka Teddy Riner lit the Olympic cauldron alongside which sprinter?
Marie-José Pérec
Marie-José Pérec, a three-time Olympic champion, shared the honour with Riner, who like her was born in Guadeloupe and who went on to win two more judo golds at those Games.
Q 26Above which Paris garden did the balloon-style Olympic cauldron float each evening in 2024?
Tuileries
Tuileries hosted the cauldron beside the Louvre, its ring of light rising 60 metres above the garden each evening; in 2025 France announced the balloon would return every summer until the 2028 Games.
Q 27How were the flames of the Paris 2024 cauldron produced, a first for the Olympics?
LED lights and water mist
LED lights and water mist stood in for flames because the organisers wanted low-carbon Games; their chief said the cauldron should be spectacular without the emissions of burning fuel.
Q 28Where was the Paris 2024 closing ceremony held?
Stade de France
Stade de France got the farewell after being passed over for the opening, which was staged on the river; the show ended there with the flame, carried in its lantern, being blown out.
Q 29Which sport was staged beneath the glass roof of the Grand Palais at Paris 2024?
Fencing
Fencing shared the Grand Palais with taekwondo; the hall, built for the 1900 World's Fair, had closed in 2021 for its first full restoration and reopened in time for the Games.
Q 30Which American actor starred in the handover to the 2028 hosts at the Paris closing ceremony?
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise descended on a wire from the stadium roof, collected the Olympic flag and rode out on a motorcycle, a stunt in the style of his Mission: Impossible films.