Summer Olympics
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50 free Summer Olympics trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Summer Olympics have been producing unlikely stories since 1896: a marathon winner with no shoes, a scoreboard that could not display a perfect score, an opening ceremony held on a river. Every four years the Games add a few more, and the best of them make good trivia. This quiz covers the whole sweep of Summer Olympic history. You will meet the sprinters, swimmers and gymnasts who defined their eras, the host cities that got it right and the ones left paying for it, the events that were quietly dropped from the programme, and the boycotts and protests that pulled the Games into world politics. The questions range from moments most people remember to deep cuts for Olympic obsessives, so the quiz works for a family night, a classroom warm-up or a pub round. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story behind the fact even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under Olympic rules, a Summer Olympics gold medal must be made of at least 92.5% which metal?
Silver
Silver makes up at least 92.5% of every Olympic gold medal, which carries only about six grams of gold as plating. The winners' medals were solid gold only from 1904 to 1912.
Q 02Which team event at the 1900 to 1920 Summer Olympics saw British police squads compete in service boots?
Tug of war
Tug of war once drew three British police teams to a single tournament. The Americans protested that Liverpool's officers were pulling in their work footwear, lost the appeal and withdrew in disgust.
Q 03Which city opened its Summer Olympics with athletes parading on river boats instead of into a stadium?
Paris
Paris floated its athletes down the Seine, the first opening ceremony in modern Olympic history held outside a stadium. The parade ended at a temporary arena in the Trocadéro gardens.
Q 04Which American swimmer won eight golds at the 2008 Summer Olympics, one by a hundredth of a second?
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps touched one hundredth of a second ahead of Milorad Čavić in the 100 m butterfly for his seventh gold, a finish so close that Serbia's delegation filed a protest.
Q 05Which Jamaican sprinter won the 100 and 200 metres at three consecutive Summer Olympics?
Usain Bolt
Usain Bolt took both sprint titles in 2008, 2012 and 2016, which no other sprinter has done at three Games in a row. He lost a ninth gold when a 2008 relay teammate failed a drug retest.
Q 06Which gymnast, 14, scored a perfect 10 at the 1976 Summer Olympics that the scoreboard showed as 1.00?
Nadia Comăneci
Nadia Comăneci earned six more perfect 10s at those Games. The scoreboard's maker had been told the score was impossible and never programmed it.
Q 07Which Ethiopian runner won the marathon at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot?
Abebe Bikila
Abebe Bikila ran barefoot because the new shoes he bought in Rome gave him blisters. He won again four years later, the first runner to defend an Olympic marathon title.
Q 08Which former champion, by then living with Parkinson's, lit the cauldron at the 1996 Summer Olympics?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali had won light-heavyweight gold in 1960 at the age of 18, when he was still known as Cassius Clay. Swimmer Janet Evans handed him the torch.
Q 09Which country's team leads the Summer Olympics parade of nations, while the host nation enters last?
Greece
Greece leads the parade in recognition of its role in the ancient Games, a custom that dates from the 1928 Summer Olympics.
Q 10Which city's Summer Olympics were delayed a year by a pandemic, then held almost without spectators?
Tokyo
Tokyo kept the 2020 name for marketing reasons even though the Games took place in 2021, the first Olympics ever postponed rather than cancelled.
Q 11Which American sprinter and long jumper won four golds at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and sprint relay, and was credited with single-handedly crushing the Nazi myth of Aryan supremacy.
Q 12Which city's 1972 Summer Olympics were suspended after an attack that killed eleven Israeli team members?
Munich
Munich saw competition suspended for 34 hours, the first stoppage in modern Olympic history, and 80,000 people attended a memorial service in the main stadium.
Q 13Which nickname did the 1992 US Olympic basketball squad earn as the first to field active NBA players?
The Dream Team
Q 21Which American swimmer won seven golds at the 1972 Summer Olympics, each one in world-record time?
Mark Spitz
Mark Spitz had predicted six golds four years earlier and won only two, both in relays, before his clean sweep of seven events in 1972.
Q 22Which American sprinter, who wore a leg brace as a child, won three golds at the 1960 Summer Olympics?
Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Rudolph contracted polio as a small child and lost strength in her left leg, yet became the first American woman to win three athletics golds at one Games.
Q 23Which Canadian was stripped of 100 metres gold at the 1988 Summer Olympics after a positive drug test?
Ben Johnson
The Dream Team beat its opponents by an average of 44 points, with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird on the same roster.
Q 14Which American won the long jump at four consecutive Summer Olympics from 1984 to 1996?
Carl Lewis
Carl Lewis won nine Olympic golds in all, and his long jump run matched discus thrower Al Oerter's four straight titles in a single athletics event.
Q 15Which American high jumper won gold at the 1968 Summer Olympics by going over the bar backwards?
Dick Fosbury
Dick Fosbury's back-first technique became known as the Fosbury flop; one newspaper had captioned his picture as the world's laziest high jumper.
Q 16Which city's privately funded 1984 Summer Olympics made a profit of more than $200 million?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles used existing venues for twenty of its competition sites and leaned on corporate money, finishing with a surplus of $232.5 million.
Q 17Which city's 1980 Summer Olympics went ahead despite a boycott led by the United States?
Moscow
Moscow hosted without the Americans after President Jimmy Carter set a deadline for Soviet troops to leave Afghanistan and it passed unmet.
Q 18Which live animals were used as targets in a shooting event at the 1900 Summer Olympics?
Pigeons
Pigeons were the targets, and the Belgian Léon de Lunden shot 21 of them on his way to victory. No other Olympic Games has used living creatures this way.
Q 19Which Australian sprinter lit the cauldron at the 2000 Summer Olympics and then won the 400 metres?
Cathy Freeman
Cathy Freeman took her victory lap carrying both the Aboriginal and Australian flags, although unofficial flags were banned at the Games.
Q 20Which city staged the first modern Summer Olympics in 1896, in a restored ancient stadium?
Athens
Athens held the Games in the Panathenaic Stadium, restored with a donation of 920,000 drachmas from the businessman George Averoff, whose statue was unveiled outside it.
Ben Johnson had crossed the line in a world-record 9.79 seconds, but his sample contained the steroid stanozolol and he was disqualified three days later.
Q 24Which 200 metres champion raised a black-gloved fist on the podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics?
Tommie Smith
Tommie Smith and bronze medallist John Carlos shared one pair of gloves, because Carlos had left his own in the Olympic Village.
Q 25Which American gymnast landed a vault on an injured ankle to seal team gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics?
Kerri Strug
Kerri Strug was carried onto the medal podium by coach Béla Károlyi, then treated in hospital for a third-degree sprain and tendon damage.
Q 26Which American diver hit his head on the springboard at the 1988 Summer Olympics and still won gold?
Greg Louganis
Greg Louganis suffered a concussion in the preliminaries, yet posted the round's highest single score with his very next dive and won the final by 25 points.
Q 27Which American was stripped of two 1912 Summer Olympics golds for having played semi-professional baseball?
Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe had his titles restored in 1983, thirty years after his death, when the IOC ruled that the decision to strip him had come too late under its own rules.
Q 28Which Pacific nation's first Olympic medal was the rugby sevens gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics?
Fiji
Fiji had never won an Olympic medal of any colour before its men, captained by Osea Kolinisau, took the first men's rugby sevens title ever contested at the Games.
Q 29Which sport made its Summer Olympics debut in 2021, when a 13-year-old won one of its first golds?
Skateboarding
Skateboarding crowned Momiji Nishiya in the women's street event at just 13 years and 330 days old, ahead of Brazil's Rayssa Leal.
Q 30Which city took 30 years to pay off its 1976 Summer Olympics stadium, nicknamed the Big Owe?
Montreal
Montreal's mayor had promised the Games could no more run a deficit than a man could have a baby, yet the stadium was not paid off until November 2006.