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80 free Jesse Owens trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Jesse Owens won four gold medals in a week at the 1936 Games in front of the Nazi leadership, and a year earlier had set or tied six world records in three-quarters of an hour with a sore back. Then he came home to a freight elevator at the Waldorf Astoria, a lifetime ban from amateur sport and years of racing horses for cash. This quiz covers all of it: the sharecropper's son who became the Buckeye Bullet, the Berlin sprints and jumps, the teammates dropped from the relay, and the German rival who became a friend. It also follows the long second act: the Ford job, the jazz band, the Mets, the goodwill tours, the tax case, the presidents who honoured him and the films, novels and asteroid that carry his name. Questions run from easy warm-ups to details only track historians will know, so it works as a family quiz or a real test. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Owens, the 1936 Games and the people around him, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city did Jesse Owens win his Olympic gold medals in 1936?
Berlin
The host nation still topped the medal table with 101 medals, but Owens was the most successful individual athlete of the Games.
Q 02How many gold medals did Jesse Owens win at the 1936 Games?
Four
He set an Olympic record in every individual event he entered, and a world record in the relay.
Q 03In which US state was Jesse Owens born?
Alabama
His birthplace, the tiny community of Oakville, opened a memorial park and museum in his honour in 1996.
Q 04When Owens was nine, his family joined the Great Migration north and settled in which city?
Cleveland, Ohio
His father and older brother found work in a steel mill, while young Jesse delivered groceries and worked in a shoe repair shop.
Q 05How did the boy known as J. C. end up being called 'Jesse'?
A teacher misheard his initials
His thick Southern accent did the trick on his first day at a new school in the North, and the name stuck for life.
Q 06Where did Jesse Owens enrol as a student in 1933?
Ohio State University
He had to live off campus with the other Black athletes and eat at segregated restaurants when the team travelled.
Q 07By what nickname was Owens affectionately known during his college career?
The Buckeye Bullet
He won a record haul of NCAA titles in just two seasons of varsity competition.
Q 08What illness caused Jesse Owens's death in 1980?
Lung cancer
He had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 35 years, having started at age 32.
Q 09What is the title of the 2016 biopic in which Stephan James plays Owens?
Race
Its one-word title is a deliberate double meaning, and the film was shot largely in Montreal with support from the Owens family.
Q 10Short of money after the Games, Owens earned cash by racing against which animals?
Horses
His trick was to pick a high-strung Thoroughbred that would be spooked by the starter's shotgun and get a bad jump.
Q 11Who finally equalled Owens's feat of winning the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and sprint relay at one Games?
Carl Lewis
It took 48 years, and it happened at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Q 12'It was our president who snubbed me,' Owens said in 1936. Who was in the White House?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Owens complained that the president never even sent him a telegram, and he was never invited to the White House after his triumph.
Q 13The runner-up to Owens in the 200 m was the older brother of which sporting pioneer?
Jackie Robinson
Mack Robinson took silver in the 200 m eleven years before his younger brother broke the major leagues' colour line.
Q 21Owens ran the sprint relay only after which two athletes were dropped that morning?
Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller
Both were Jewish Americans, and the decision has long been read as an attempt to spare the Nazi hosts embarrassment.
Q 22What world-record time, in seconds, did the US sprint relay team clock with Owens on the lead-off leg?
39.8
The mark stood for two decades until another US quartet ran 39.5 in 1956.
Q 23What was Owens's winning time, in seconds, in the 1936 Olympic 100 m final?
10.3
He actually matched his own world record of 10.2 in the quarter-finals, but a following wind kept it out of the record books.
Q 14Which German finished second to Owens in the jumping pit and struck up a famous friendship with him?
Luz Long
He was the first to congratulate the winner, and the two walked arm-in-arm to the dressing room in front of the Nazi leadership.
Q 15Months before his death, Owens tried to talk which president out of boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics?
Jimmy Carter
He argued that the Games were meant to be a time-out from war and above politics; the boycott went ahead anyway.
Q 16What was the occupation of Owens's father, Henry?
Sharecropper
Jesse was the youngest of the family's children and the grandson of an enslaved man.
Q 17Which president awarded Owens the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976?
Gerald Ford
The same year he received the Silver Olympic Order for his 1936 victories and his defence of the ethics of sport.
Q 18Which president sent Owens abroad as a goodwill 'Ambassador of Sports' in 1955?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
He was dispatched to India, the Philippines and Malaya to promote physical exercise and American ideals.
Q 19What was Jesse Owens's real first name?
James
His middle name, Cleveland, was also his father's middle name and, by coincidence, the name of the city he grew up in.
Q 20Which teammate and college friend finished a tenth of a second behind Owens in the 100 m final?
Ralph Metcalfe
He had also taken silver in 1932, in a virtual dead heat he insisted to his dying day should have been a tie; he later served four terms in Congress.
Q 24How far, in metres, did Owens leap to win the Olympic long jump title?
8.06
It was a few inches short of his own world record, and the top two both beat the old Olympic record several times that afternoon.
Q 25Who finally broke Owens's long jump world record in 1960?
Ralph Boston
Owens was in the stands in Rome later that year to watch the new record-holder win Olympic gold.
Q 26For how many years did Owens's 1935 long jump world record survive?
25
He set it with an injured back, on a day when he broke or tied six world records in three-quarters of an hour.
Q 27At which meet did Owens set five world records and tie a sixth in under an hour?
The Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor
A sports historian in 2005 named it the most impressive athletic achievement since 1850, and a plaque now marks the spot at Ferry Field.
Q 28On what date did Owens have his 'Day of Days', setting or tying six world records in 45 minutes?
May 25, 1935
He was nursing a lower back injury and competed between 3:15 and 4 p.m.
Q 29On his record-breaking day in 1935, which event did Owens merely tie the world record in?
100-yard dash
His 9.4 that day matched a mark he had first equalled as a high-school senior; his two 220-yard times also counted as metric 200 m records.
Q 30Which shoemaker persuaded Jesse Owens to compete in his firm's spikes at the 1936 Olympics?
Adi Dassler
The Gebrüder Dassler firm later split into two rival brands run by the two brothers.