Usain Bolt Trivia
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48 free Usain Bolt trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Usain Bolt is the fastest human ever timed, holder of the 100 m, 200 m and 4 x 100 m world records and the only sprinter to win the Olympic 100 and 200 at three consecutive Games. This quiz covers the whole story: the cricket-mad boy from Sherwood Content, the practical joke that got him detained by police, the world junior title won with his shoes on the wrong feet, coach Glen Mills, the world records in New York, Beijing and Berlin, the chest-slap celebration, the Daegu false start, the London and Rio doubles, the stripped relay gold, the bronze in his farewell race and the strange afterlives as a footballer, scooter entrepreneur and fraud victim. Easy questions ask which country he ran for and his 100 m world record; harder ones cover the Berlin Wall segment, the size of his scoliosis and who beat him in his last final. It suits athletics fans, Olympic trivia buffs, and quiz nights that want a sports round everyone can enjoy. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Bolt and his championship races, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Bolt's 100 m world record, set in 2009?
9.58
It was the biggest improvement on the record since electronic timing began.
Q 02What is Bolt's 200 m world record, also set in 2009?
19.19
Bolt ran 19.19 seconds in the Berlin 2009 World Championship 200 m final, taking 0.11 s off the 19.30 he had set at the Beijing Olympics a year earlier.
Q 03Bolt is the only sprinter to win the Olympic 100 m and 200 m titles at how many consecutive Games?
Three
Bolt won the 100 m and 200 m double at three consecutive Games — Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016 — a feat no other sprinter, man or woman, has matched.
Q 04In which small Jamaican town was Bolt born on 21 August 1986?
Sherwood Content
Bolt was born in Sherwood Content, a small town in Trelawny parish, where his parents Wellesley and Jennifer ran the local grocery store and he played cricket and football in the street with his brother Sadiki.
Q 05A coach in which sport at Bolt's high school first urged him to try athletics?
Cricket
Bolt himself said that as a child he never really thought about anything other than sports.
Q 06As a teenager Bolt was detained by police for what prank before the CARIFTA Trials?
Hiding in a van instead of preparing for a final
The community blamed his coach Pablo McNeil, but Bolt went on to set championship records at the Games anyway.
Q 07What did the nervous 15-year-old Bolt do before winning the 200 m at the 2002 World Juniors?
Put his shoes on the wrong feet
A nervous Bolt put his shoes on the wrong feet before the 2002 World Junior 200 m final in Kingston, noticed in time, and won in 20.61 — at 15 the youngest world-junior gold medallist ever.
Q 08How tall had Bolt grown by the age of 15?
1.95 metres (6 ft 5 in)
By 15 Bolt already stood about 1.95 metres (6 ft 5 in), towering over his peers; that height later produced the huge stride that let him cover 100 m in around 41 steps.
Q 09Which former Jamaican Prime Minister arranged for the young Bolt to move to Kingston to train?
P. J. Patterson
Prime Minister P. J. Patterson recognised Bolt's talent and arranged for him to move to Kingston to train with the Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association at the University of Technology; Bolt turned down US college scholarships.
Q 10In 2004 Bolt became the first junior to break 20 s for 200 m, with what time?
19.93
He held the world under-20 and under-18 records for the distance until Erriyon Knighton surpassed them in 2021.
Q 11Which coach began working with Bolt in 2005 and guided him through his entire record-breaking career?
Glen Mills
Glen Mills took over in 2005 and coached Bolt until his 2017 retirement; Mills wanted him to move up to 400 m and only agreed to the 100 m once Bolt broke the Jamaican 200 m record.
Q 12At the Athens 2004 Olympics, his Games debut, how did Bolt fare in the 200 m?
Eliminated in round one
Bolt was eliminated in round one of the Athens 2004 200 m, running only 21.05 seconds while hampered by a hamstring injury that had troubled him all season.
Q 13Whose 36-year-old Jamaican 200 m record did Bolt break in 2007 to earn the right to run the 100 m?
Don Quarrie
Q 21In which city did Bolt set his 100 m world record at the 2009 World Championships?
Berlin
Bolt set the 100 m world record in Berlin's Olympiastadion in August 2009, in a final billed as 'Das Duell' with Tyson Gay — the stadium where Jesse Owens had starred in 1936.
Q 22What unusual gift did the host city's mayor present to Bolt after the 2009 World Championships?
A three-ton section of the old Wall
Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit presented Bolt with a three-ton, 12-foot section of the old Berlin Wall, saying he had shown 'one can tear down walls that had been considered as insurmountable'.
Q 23What happened to Bolt in the 100 m final at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu?
Bolt's 19.75 in Kingston in 2007 beat Don Quarrie's 19.86, the Jamaican record since 1971, by 0.11 seconds, and his coach honoured their bargain by letting him race the 100 m.
Q 14Where did Bolt set his first 100 m world record, 9.72, on 31 May 2008?
Icahn Stadium, New York
Bolt ran 9.72 at the Reebok Grand Prix in Icahn Stadium, New York, in only his fifth senior 100 m; runner-up Tyson Gay said 'it looked like his knees were going past my face'.
Q 15Whose 100 m world record of 9.74 did Bolt take in 2008?
Asafa Powell
Asafa Powell had set the 9.74 record in Rieti, Italy, in September 2007; the fellow Jamaican later ran the anchor leg on Bolt's Beijing 2008 relay team.
Q 16Bolt won the Beijing 2008 Olympic 100 m in 9.69 despite doing what before the line?
Slowing down to celebrate, with a shoelace untied
Analysts at the University of Oslo estimated he could have run about 9.55 had he not eased up.
Q 17Which IOC president condemned Bolt's chest-slapping Beijing celebration as disrespectful?
Jacques Rogge
IOC president Jacques Rogge said the celebration was 'not the way we perceive being a champion'; Bolt replied: 'I wasn't bragging. When I saw I wasn't covered, I was just happy.'
Q 18Whose 200 m world record of 19.32, set at Atlanta 1996, did Bolt break in Beijing?
Michael Johnson
Johnson had predicted Bolt would win gold but that his record would survive; Bolt ran 19.30 into a headwind.
Q 19Bolt's Beijing double made him the first man to hold both sprint world records since what became mandatory?
Fully automatic timing
Fully automatic timing became mandatory for world records in 1977; Bolt's 9.69 and 19.30 in Beijing made him the first man since then to hold both sprint records at the same time.
Q 20Why was Jamaica stripped of its Beijing 2008 4 × 100 m relay gold in January 2017?
A retested sample from Nesta Carter was positive for a banned substance
The team had run 37.10, a world record at the time.
He was disqualified for a false start
Bolt was disqualified for a false start in the Daegu 2011 100 m final, the highest-profile casualty of the one-false-start rule introduced in 2010; he went on to win the 200 m there in 19.40.
Q 24Who won the 100 m in Daegu after Bolt's disqualification?
Yohan Blake
Yohan Blake, Bolt's training partner, won the Daegu 2011 final in 9.92; he beat Bolt again at the 2012 Jamaican trials before taking silver behind him in both sprints in London.
Q 25What time did Bolt run to win the 100 m at the 2012 Olympics?
9.63
Bolt won the London 2012 100 m in 9.63 seconds, an Olympic record, then defended his 200 m title in 19.32 ahead of Yohan Blake and Warren Weir in a Jamaican podium sweep.
Q 26By how much did Jamaica lower the 4 × 100 m relay world record to 36.84 in 2012?
Two tenths of a second
Bolt, Nesta Carter, Michael Frater and a fourth Jamaican knocked two tenths off their previous mark from 2011.
Q 27At the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, Bolt beat Justin Gatlin in the 100 m by how much?
One hundredth of a second
Bolt won the Beijing 2015 final in 9.79 to Justin Gatlin's 9.80, a margin of one hundredth of a second, after an injury-hit season in which Gatlin had run the year's fastest times.
Q 28What time did Bolt run to win his third Olympic 100 m title in Rio in 2016?
9.81
Bolt won the Rio 2016 100 m in 9.81 seconds, ahead of Justin Gatlin's 9.89, for a third straight Olympic 100 m title; he never lost an Olympic final.
Q 29Where did Bolt finish in his final individual race, the 100 m at the 2017 World Championships in London?
Third
Bolt finished third in 9.95, taking bronze behind Justin Gatlin (9.92) and Christian Coleman (9.94) in his final individual race at the London 2017 World Championships.
Q 30How did Bolt's very last race, the 2017 World Championship 4 × 100 m relay final, end?
He pulled up injured
Bolt pulled up injured with a hamstring cramp on the anchor leg and fell to the track as Great Britain won the London 2017 relay; he had already skipped the 200 m at those championships.