Wilma Rudolph Trivia
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45 free Wilma Rudolph trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely, the twentieth of twenty-two children, wore a leg brace until she was twelve, and eight years later was the fastest woman in the world. This quiz follows the whole story: the polio, the weekly bus rides to Nashville for treatment, the high-school basketball star nicknamed Skeeter, and the day Tennessee State coach Ed Temple spotted her and invited her to train with the Tigerbelles. From there it goes to the track: the bronze relay medal at sixteen in Melbourne, the world record at the 1960 trials, the cinder track of Rome's Stadio Olimpico, the wind-aided 100 metres, the near-dropped baton in the relay, and the three gold medals that made her the first American woman to win three at a single Games. It also covers what came after: the nicknames from Italy and France, the homecoming parade she forced Clarksville to integrate, dating Muhammad Ali, retiring at 22 while still world record-holder, teaching second grade, the goodwill trip to West Africa, the foundation, the postage stamp and the Berlin school that carries her name. Easy questions suit anyone who has heard her name; the expert tier is for track and field historians. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on Rudolph and on her coach, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which childhood disease left Wilma Rudolph's left leg in a brace for years?
Polio
Polio weakened her left leg and foot, and doctors doubted she would ever walk normally; she had already survived double pneumonia and scarlet fever.
Q 02Rudolph was born in 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, just outside which Tennessee city where she grew up?
Clarksville
Clarksville became home soon after her birth in nearby Saint Bethlehem on 23 June 1940; the city later named a boulevard after her and raised a life-size statue of her.
Q 03Rudolph's siblings took turns doing what to her weakened leg every day?
Massaging it
Massaging it was a family job: her mother learned the routine from hospital staff and taught the older children, who worked on the leg several times a day until she could walk unaided.
Q 04Rudolph travelled about 50 miles for regular treatment at which Black medical college in Nashville?
Meharry
Meharry Medical College gave her leg heat and water therapy; she and her mother made the trip for two years because her hometown offered Black patients little medical care.
Q 05Coach C. C. Gray said the young Rudolph was little, fast and always in his way, earning her which nickname?
Skeeter
Skeeter, short for mosquito, stuck through her school years; Gray also started the girls' track team at Burt High after a college coach asked him to.
Q 06In which sport did Rudolph first star at Burt High School before turning to track?
Basketball
Basketball came first: once her brace was off she joined her siblings' backyard games, then became an all-state player at Burt High who scored 49 points in one game.
Q 07Which Tennessee State coach spotted the teenage Rudolph and invited her to his summer track camp at 14?
Ed Temple
Ed Temple's runners travelled to meets packed into a station wagon; he went on to lead the US women's Olympic track teams of 1960 and 1964.
Q 08What was the nickname of the Tennessee State women's track team Rudolph ran with?
The Tigerbelles
The Tigerbelles, Tennessee State's women's track team, sent 40 athletes to the Olympics and won 34 national team titles under one coach; Rudolph trained with them while still at high school.
Q 09The teenage Rudolph failed to win a race at her first big meet, held at which Alabama college?
Tuskegee
Tuskegee left her crushed, but after a summer at a college training camp she won all nine events she entered at a national AAU meet.
Q 10At the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Rudolph held which distinction on the US track and field team?
Youngest member
Youngest member: a 16-year-old high-school junior, she was knocked out in the heats of her individual sprint, four years before she dominated the next Games.
Q 11What medal did Rudolph win in the 4 x 100 relay at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics?
Bronze
Bronze: back home her classmates passed the medal around, and when she tried to polish off their handprints she found that bronze doesn't shine, so she resolved to go for gold next time.
Q 12Why was Rudolph's 11.0-second Rome 100 metres win not ratified as a world record?
The wind was too strong
The wind was too strong: a tailwind of 2.75 metres per second exceeded the 2.0 m/s limit for record purposes, so her 11.0 stood only as the winning time.
Q 13Rudolph was the first American woman to win the Olympic 100 metres since which athlete at the 1936 Games?
Helen Stephens
Q 21What held up Rudolph's team on the way to a 1960 meet in Texas?
Their driver refused to take them
Their driver refused to take them, a snub of the kind Black athletes met across the Jim Crow South, and the team had to wait until a replacement was found.
Q 22The US Information Agency made its 1961 documentary Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion chiefly for which audience?
Viewers overseas
Viewers overseas: the agency was America's Cold War voice abroad and aimed its work only at foreign audiences, so her story was filmed as an advertisement for the United States.
Q 23Rudolph's last races came at Stanford in 1962, in a dual meet against which country?
Helen Stephens, Missouri's 'Fulton Flash', took the 1936 title from defending champion Stella Walsh and was never beaten in her brief career; the next American winner was Rudolph, 24 years on.
Q 14Rudolph stepped in a hole at the Rome practice track the day before her first race and hurt what?
Her ankle
Her ankle swelled and had to be iced and strapped, yet she equalled the world record of 11.3 seconds in her semifinal and went on to win all three of her events.
Q 15Which leg did Rudolph run in the Rome 4 x 100 relay final?
Anchor
Anchor: she nearly dropped a fumbled final pass, set off about two metres down, then ran past Germany's anchor, Jutta Heine, to win gold for an all-Tennessee State quartet.
Q 16How did Rudolph's college coach punish runners for every minute they were late to practice?
An extra lap
An extra lap per minute was his rule, and Rudolph learned it the hard way: after oversleeping by half an hour she had to run all 30.
Q 17The Italians gave Rudolph which nickname after Rome?
La Gazzella Nera
La Gazzella Nera, the Black Gazelle, was the Italian press's name for her speed and grace; Rome's papers also called her the Black Pearl, and the French called her La Perle Noire.
Q 18The French nicknamed Rudolph La Perle Noire and, after a Glenn Miller hit, La what?
Chattanooga Choo-Choo
Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the 1941 swing hit about a train ride to Tennessee, was the French press's salute to a sprinter from that state.
Q 19Rudolph became a household name partly because Rome 1960 was the first Summer Olympics with what?
US television coverage
US television coverage came from CBS, which made Rome the first Summer Games shown on American screens, so millions at home watched her three wins and she flew back a national celebrity.
Q 20Rudolph refused to attend her own hometown homecoming celebration unless what changed?
It was integrated
It was integrated: she would not attend unless Black and white residents could celebrate together, so the parade and banquet of October 1960 became the first integrated public event in the town's history.
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union: she won the 100 metres and ran on the winning sprint relay in the Cold War dual meet, then retired at 22 while still the world record holder.
Q 24Rudolph explained skipping the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by comparing herself to which athlete's choice in 1936?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens walked away after his four golds of 1936, and she said she would likewise 'stick with the glory' she already had rather than risk something lacking in Tokyo.
Q 25At the 1956 Olympic trials, what did veteran sprinter Mae Faggs tell the nervous young Rudolph to do?
Stick with me
Stick with me, said Faggs, a relay gold medallist in 1952, promising that was all it took to make the team; Rudolph matched her stride for stride and both went to Melbourne.
Q 26In 1963 the State Department sent Rudolph as a goodwill ambassador to the Friendship Games in which region?
West Africa
West Africa: she represented the United States at the Games of Friendship in Dakar, Senegal, on a month-long tour that also took her to Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Upper Volta.
Q 27In 1963 Rudolph joined a protest in her hometown to desegregate what?
A restaurant
A restaurant: the triple Olympic champion, just back from representing her country abroad, joined fellow protesters at a hometown restaurant that still refused to serve Black customers.
Q 28After illness cost her two years of school, Rudolph started in, and later taught, which grade?
Second grade
Second grade: illness kept her at home until she was seven, so she entered Cobb Elementary a level up, and after retiring from the track she went back there to teach that same grade.
Q 29Which future boxing legend had a crush on Rudolph at the 1960 Rome Olympics?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, invited her home to Louisville after the Games and drove her around the city in a pink Cadillac convertible.
Q 30The 1977 TV film Wilma, based on her autobiography, gave an early role to which future star?
Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington made his screen debut in Wilma as her boyfriend; Shirley Jo Finney played the sprinter, Cicely Tyson co-starred, and Bud Greenspan wrote and directed the NBC film.