Track and Field Trivia
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60 free Track and Field trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
52 free Track and field trivia questions with answers. Track and field is the oldest sport at the Olympics and the simplest to explain: run faster, jump higher, throw farther. The stories underneath are anything but simple, and this quiz digs into them: why a marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards, who ran the greatest 45 minutes in sport, why Dick Fosbury went over backwards, and how many years Bob Beamon's jump survived. The early questions cover the basics any Olympics viewer knows: Bolt's 100 m record, the ten events of the decathlon, the barefoot marathon champion. The later ones are for people who follow Diamond League meets: false-start rules, relay changeover zones, hammer weights, and which Kenyan is the only triple Olympic 1500 m champion. Every answer has been checked against a published source and carries a link, so you can settle an argument in the stands. Good for coaches, club runners and anyone counting down to the next Games.
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Q 01What is Usain Bolt's 100 m world record, set at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin?
9.58 seconds
9.58 seconds: Bolt cut 0.11 from his own 9.69 of the Beijing Olympics, the largest single improvement since fully automatic timing began, and ran 19.19 for 200 m at the same Berlin meet.
Q 02How many Olympic gold medals did Usain Bolt win?
Eight
Eight: Bolt won the 100 m, 200 m and 4x100 m at Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016, but the 2008 relay gold was stripped in 2017 after teammate Nesta Carter's doping disqualification.
Q 03How many events make up the decathlon?
Ten
They run over two days, from the 100 m to the 1500 m; the winner is traditionally called the world's greatest athlete, a line King Gustav V used on Jim Thorpe in 1912.
Q 04Which event closes the decathlon?
1500 metres
1500 metres is the tenth and final decathlon event, run at the end of day two after the javelin; each second gained or lost there is worth about six points, so it can swing the standings.
Q 05Who set the decathlon world record of 9,126 points in 2018?
Kevin Mayer
Kevin Mayer scored 9,126 points at the Décastar meeting in Talence in September 2018, passing Ashton Eaton's 9,045 to become only the third man to top 9,000 points.
Q 06How many events are in the women's heptathlon?
Seven
Seven: 100 m hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200 m on day one, then long jump, javelin and 800 m on day two; it replaced the five-event pentathlon in 1981.
Q 07Who set the heptathlon world record of 7,291 points at the Seoul Olympics?
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee scored 7,291 points at the Seoul Games, beating her own world record, and also won the long jump gold there with a 7.40 m Olympic record.
Q 08Which Belgian became the first athlete to win three Olympic multi-event golds, in the heptathlon?
Nafissatou Thiam
Nafissatou Thiam won the heptathlon at Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, the first three-peat in any Olympic combined event; she carried Belgium's flag at the Tokyo opening ceremony.
Q 09What is the official distance of a marathon?
42.195 kilometres
42.195 kilometres equals 26 miles 385 yards, the length of the 1908 London Olympic course from Windsor Castle to the finish in front of the royal box at the stadium.
Q 10The marathon takes its name from the legend of which Greek messenger?
Pheidippides
Pheidippides is the messenger of legend who ran about 40 km from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC, announced the victory over the Persians and collapsed dead.
Q 11In what year did the marathon distance become standardised at 42.195 km?
1921
1921 is when the IAAF adopted the 1908 London Olympic distance of 42.195 km as the standard; Olympic marathons before then had varied between about 40 and 42.75 km.
Q 12Which Ethiopian won the 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome running barefoot?
Abebe Bikila
Abebe Bikila, a member of Haile Selassie's imperial guard, won in Rome barefoot in a world-best 2:15:16 and defended the title in Tokyo in 1964, this time wearing shoes.
Q 13Eliud Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 for the marathon distance in Vienna in 2019 in an event with what name?
INEOS 1:59 Challenge
Q 21The back-first high jump technique that won gold at the 1968 Olympics is named after which American?
Dick Fosbury
Dick Fosbury cleared 2.24 m for gold in Mexico City; a Medford Mail-Tribune caption, 'Fosbury Flops Over Bar', named the technique, which deep foam landing mats had made practical.
Q 22Whose 1993 men's high jump world record of 2.45 m is the longest-standing in the event?
Javier Sotomayor
Javier Sotomayor of Cuba cleared 2.45 m in Salamanca, Spain, in July 1993, a year after winning Olympic gold in Barcelona; he had first set the record at 2.43 m five years earlier.
Q 23Pole vaulter Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis competes for Sweden but was born and raised in which US state?
Louisiana
INEOS 1:59 Challenge was the name of the Vienna event; rotating pacemakers and bike-delivered drinks meant the 1:59:40 was never ratified, so his official best stayed the 2:01:09 from Berlin 2022.
Q 14Which Kenyan broke Eliud Kipchoge's marathon world record at the 2023 Chicago Marathon?
Kelvin Kiptum
Kelvin Kiptum ran 2:00:35 in Chicago on 8 October 2023, taking 34 seconds off Kipchoge's mark; he was killed in a road accident in Kenya in February 2024, aged 24.
Q 15Which is the world's oldest annual marathon, first run in 1897?
Boston
Boston was first run on 19 April 1897, a year after the Athens Olympic marathon inspired it; 15 men started and John McDermott won in 2:55:10.
Q 16Emil Zátopek, who won three distance golds at the 1952 Olympics, had what nickname?
The Czech Locomotive
The Czech Locomotive earned his nickname with a grimacing, head-rolling style; at Helsinki 1952 he won the 5,000 m, 10,000 m and the marathon, the first he had ever run, within a week.
Q 17How many gold medals did Jesse Owens win at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
Four
Four: the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and 4x100 m relay; a year earlier, at the 1935 Big Ten meet in Ann Arbor, he had set three world records and tied a fourth inside 45 minutes.
Q 18How far did Bob Beamon jump at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics?
8.90 m
8.90 m added 55 cm to the previous record of 8.35 m, in Mexico City's thin air with a legal 2.0 m/s tailwind; it stood as the world record until August 1991.
Q 19Who set the men's long jump world record of 8.95 m at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships?
Mike Powell
Mike Powell jumped 8.95 m with a 0.3 m/s tailwind in the fifth round; Carl Lewis had passed Beamon's mark earlier with a wind-aided 8.91 m and answered with a legal 8.87 m that fell short.
Q 20How many Olympic gold medals did Carl Lewis win?
Nine
Nine: four in Los Angeles, two in Seoul, two in Barcelona and one in Atlanta, including the long jump at four straight Games from 1984 to 1996, matching Al Oerter's discus run.
Louisiana: Duplantis was born in Lafayette in 1999 to an American pole-vaulting father and a Swedish heptathlete mother, and trained in the family's backyard pit before choosing to represent Sweden.
Q 24How much does the men's shot weigh in open competition?
7.26 kg
That is 16 pounds, the same as the men's hammer; throwers use either the glide or the spin.
Q 25Who won three straight Olympic shot put titles from 2016 and threw a record 23.56 m?
Ryan Crouser
Ryan Crouser won in Rio, Tokyo and Paris, and his 23.56 m at the Los Angeles Grand Prix in May 2023 beat his own 2021 world record of 23.37 m.
Q 26Why was the men's javelin redesigned in 1986?
To shorten throws and stop flat landings
To shorten throws and stop flat landings, the centre of gravity was moved 4 cm forward after Uwe Hohn's 104.80 m in 1984; the new spec made the javelin nose-dive sooner and land point first.
Q 27Which ancient Greek statue by Myron shows a discus thrower and gave its name to the classic pose?
Discobolus
Discobolus, Myron's bronze of about 460-450 BC, survives only in Roman marble copies; the Czech thrower František Janda-Suk took a rotational technique from studying its pose and won silver in 1900.
Q 28How high are the barriers in the men's 110 m hurdles?
42 inches
42 inches (1.067 m) is the men's 110 m hurdles height; the women's 100 m hurdles uses 33-inch barriers, and the men's 400 m hurdles drops to 36 inches.
Q 29What is Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone's 400 m hurdles world record, set at the 2024 Paris Olympics?
50.37
50.37 in the Paris final was her sixth world record in the event, after 51.90, 51.46, 51.41, 50.68 and 50.65, and 0.28 better than her own previous mark from the US Trials.
Q 30How long is the passing zone in the 4x100 m relay since the 2017 rule change?
30 metres
30 metres: the old 20 m exchange box and 10 m acceleration zone were merged from late 2017, and the baton must be passed within the zone, though the outgoing runner may start anywhere inside it.