Ski Trivia
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64 free Ski trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
70 free Ski trivia questions with answers. Skiing has a longer memory than most sports. These 64 questions start with the Old Norse word for a cleft plank and the Telemark farmer who bent skis into shape, then move through Arnold Lunn's first slalom, the banana-conveyor engineer who built the first chairlift at Sun Valley, and the racers who defined the World Cup: Stenmark, Killy, Klammer, Tomba, Maier, Vonn, Hirscher and Shiffrin. The rest ranges wherever a ski bum's conversation does. Freestyle, ski jumping and Nordic combined get their share, as do the resorts everyone argues about (Chamonix, St. Anton, Vail, Whistler, Aspen, Zermatt, Niseko), the equipment that changed everything from Head's laminated ski to Elan's carving sidecut, the piste colours, ski films from Downhill Racer to Hot Dog, après-ski, avalanche safety and speed skiing's 255 km/h record. It suits anyone who has ridden a chairlift, from World Cup obsessives to once-a-year holiday skiers. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia and other primary sources before publication, so the dates, margins and nicknames are the real ones.
30 of 64 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'ski' comes from Old Norse skíð, which literally meant what?
Cleft wood
Cleft wood: Old English already had a cousin of the word, scīd, a strip of wood, yet English still borrowed 'ski' from Scandinavia.
Q 02Norse mythology's Ullr and Skaði are regarded as the god and goddess of skiing and what other pursuit?
Hunting
Hunting: in the Prose Edda Skaði skis and shoots wild beasts, and she chose a husband by his feet alone, hoping for Baldr but getting Njörðr.
Q 03Skiing pioneer Sondre Norheim, the 'father of Telemark skiing', is buried in which US state?
North Dakota
North Dakota: he settled there after emigrating in 1884, and the Olympic flames for the 1952 and 1960 Winter Games were lit at his birthplace.
Q 04In 1868 Sondre Norheim won a national ski competition held in which city?
Christiania
Christiania: the win spread word of his shorter, side-cut skis and heel bindings.
Q 05Telemark skiing is named after a region in which country?
Norway
Norway: the telemark turn bends the back leg and lifts that heel off the ski, so it only works with a free-heel binding.
Q 06Who invented the slalom race, first run in 1922 with the winner decided purely on time?
Arnold Lunn
Arnold Lunn: his son Peter captained Britain's ski team at the 1936 Olympics, then spent over 40 years in British intelligence.
Q 07The ski-racing word 'slalom' comes from an old dialect term that literally meant what?
Sloping track
Sloping track: the word began with rural ski trails in the 1860s, but slalom became today's timed gate race in Central Europe from the 1920s.
Q 08Why did Austria and Switzerland enter no men when alpine skiing debuted at the 1936 Winter Olympics?
Instructors were ruled professionals
Instructors were ruled professionals: the IOC barred paid ski teachers, which even kept 1935 world champion Toni Seelos out.
Q 09The world's first chairlifts were installed in 1936 at which resort?
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley, Idaho: rather than adapt rope tows and J-bars, its builders put single chairs on Dollar and Proctor mountains.
Q 10James Curran based his 1936 chairlift design on equipment built to load what onto ships?
Bananas
Bananas: he had worked for an Omaha steel firm that built banana conveyors for tropical cargo ships, and simply swapped the hooks for chairs.
Q 11Which railroad opened America's first destination winter resort in December 1936?
Union Pacific
Union Pacific: chairman Averell Harriman sent Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch across the West to find a site with plenty of snow, sunshine and little wind.
Q 12Hannes Schneider, often called the father of modern skiing, pioneered which technique of ski instruction?
Arlberg
Arlberg: Schneider himself appeared in Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs, a 1920 ski film about the technique.
Q 13Which French town's 1924 'International Winter Sports Week' was later recognized as the first Winter Olympics?
Chamonix
Chamonix: a scoring error there went unnoticed for 50 years, so American ski jumper Anders Haugen received his bronze medal only in 1974.
Q 21Which downhiller won four consecutive World Cup downhill seasons from 1975 to 1978?
Franz Klammer
Franz Klammer: after those four titles he went years without a World Cup win, then came back to take a fifth downhill title in 1983.
Q 22What was Alberto Tomba's father said to have promised him if he won Olympic gold in 1988?
A Ferrari
A Ferrari: that week at Calgary he won both the giant slalom and the slalom, and he became the idol of Italian sport.
Q 23Which famous ski marathon commemorates two loyalists who skied a royal child to safety in 1206?
The Birkebeiner
The Birkebeiner: every racer must carry at least 3.5 kg on their back, standing in for the weight of the rescued prince.
Q 14Which alpine racing discipline was first run in December 1982, decades after the others?
Super-G
Its small crystal globe was not awarded until 1985-86; for three seasons its points were folded into the giant slalom standings.
Q 15Which Olympic sport has skiers stop to shoot rifles at targets along the course?
Biathlon
Biathlon: it grew out of military ski patrol exercises, and in the Nordic languages the sport is simply called 'ski-shooting'.
Q 16Which warm winds forced ski events to be rescheduled at the 1988 Winter Olympics?
Chinook
Chinook: strong gusts forced the large-hill ski jump to be postponed four times.
Q 17Ingemar Stenmark's 86 World Cup wins all came in which two disciplines, neither a speed event?
Slalom and giant slalom
Slalom and giant slalom: he won both at the 1980 Olympics, but four years later he was barred from the Games.
Q 18German-born Hanni Wenzel won two alpine golds at the 1980 Olympics for which tiny country?
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein: she had moved there as an infant, but the country made her a citizen only after she won the 1974 world slalom title.
Q 19Jean-Claude Killy swept all three alpine golds at the 1968 Olympics in which host city?
Grenoble
Grenoble: he won the slalom only after his Austrian rival Karl Schranz was controversially disqualified.
Q 20When Colorado voters rejected funding for Denver's 1976 Winter Olympics, which city took over the Games?
Innsbruck
Innsbruck: it had already hosted in 1964, so it built a second cauldron and lit both Olympic flames together.
Q 24After cartwheeling through two layers of safety netting in the 1998 Olympic downhill, what did Hermann Maier do days later?
Won two gold medals
Won two gold medals: he had walked away from the wreck under his own power, and within days took both of his career Olympic titles.
Q 25Hermann Maier nearly lost his lower right leg in August 2001 in what kind of accident?
Motorcycle crash
Motorcycle crash: doctors feared they would have to amputate, yet he fought back to win his fourth overall World Cup title in 2004.
Q 26Ski star Bode Miller grew up in a log cabin without electricity or indoor plumbing in which US state?
New Hampshire
New Hampshire: famous for his reckless style, he admitted on 60 Minutes in 2006 that he had sometimes raced while 'wasted'.
Q 27Lindsey Vonn won her Olympic downhill gold at the 2010 Winter Games, held in which city?
Vancouver
Vancouver: she had hurt her shin in training only a week before, but postponed races gave it time to heal.
Q 28Which gold medalist did a young Lindsey Kildow meet, and later count as her mentor?
Picabo Street
Picabo Street: soon after her 1998 Olympic gold she broke her left femur in a crash, and she needed two years of rehab.
Q 29What surgery let Lindsey Vonn end her retirement and return to World Cup racing in 2024?
A knee replacement
A knee replacement: it ended the pain that had forced her to retire, and after turning 40 she was winning World Cup races again.
Q 30Which Italian carmaker's founder built the Sestriere ski resort in the 1930s?
Fiat
Fiat: founder Giovanni Agnelli built the resort's tower hotels, and Sestriere later hosted the men's alpine races at the 2006 Winter Olympics.