The Paralympics Trivia
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48 free The Paralympics trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Paralympics trivia quiz covers the world's biggest sporting event for athletes with disabilities, from a hospital archery contest for paralysed war veterans in 1948 to a Games with thousands of competitors and record ticket sales. The easy questions handle the basics: where the Paralympics are held relative to the Olympics, the doctor who started it all, the city of the first official Games, what the name means, the three-coloured Agitos symbol and the two sports with no Olympic equivalent. From there it moves through the milestones: the first Winter Games in Sweden, Seoul 1988 sharing Olympic venues, the founding of the IPC in Düsseldorf and the 2001 deal that tied the two Games together for good. The harder half is for sports historians: George Eyser's wooden leg at the 1904 Olympics, the ten eligible impairment types, Trischa Zorn's 55 medals, Ragnhild Myklebust's winter record, the Spanish basketball scandal of Sydney 2000, boosting, the murderball origins of wheelchair rugby, the bells inside a goalball, Tanni Grey-Thompson's six London Marathons, Oscar Pistorius's blades and Channel 4's Superhumans. If you enjoyed our Olympics or sports history quizzes, this is the deep dive on the parallel Games. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the Paralympic Games, the IPC, Ludwig Guttmann, the individual sports and the athletes named before publishing.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Since 1988, when are the Paralympics held relative to the Olympics?
Shortly after them, in the same host city
Shortly after them, in the same host city: the pairing began with the 1988 Games and has been binding since 2001, when the two movements agreed that a city bidding for one must stage both.
Q 02The 1948 Stoke Mandeville Games that grew into the Paralympics had 16 wheelchair athletes competing in which sport?
Archery
Archery was the only event: 16 injured servicemen and women shot from their wheelchairs, because their hospital had made sport part of rehabilitation and wanted a contest to aim for.
Q 03Which German-Jewish neurologist, a refugee from Nazi Germany, founded the games at Stoke Mandeville Hospital?
Ludwig Guttmann
Ludwig Guttmann set up his centre at the hospital in 1944 at the British government's request and made sport part of the treatment, first as recreation and then as competition.
Q 04The first Stoke Mandeville Games were held on 29 July 1948, the same day as what?
The opening of the London Olympics
The opening of the London Olympics fell on the same day; the founder wanted an elite event for disabled athletes to equal the Olympics, and in 1952 ex-servicemen from abroad joined to make it international.
Q 05In which city were the first official Paralympic Games held in 1960?
Rome
Rome staged the Games days after its Olympics closed, the first time the Stoke Mandeville Games had left Britain, and only later were they recognised as the first Paralympics.
Q 06The 1984 Summer Paralympics skipped Olympic host Los Angeles and were split between Stoke Mandeville and which US city?
New York
New York staged events on Long Island for amputee and blind athletes, among others, while wheelchair athletes met in England, because the sports bodies had no formal ties to the Los Angeles organisers.
Q 07How does Egyptian Paralympian Ibrahim Hamadtou, who lost both arms as a boy, hold his table tennis bat?
In his mouth
In his mouth: Hamadtou lost his arms in a train accident at ten, spent nearly a year learning to grip the bat between his teeth, and uses his foot to toss the ball up for a serve.
Q 08Which sport was on the programme of the first Paralympics in 1960?
Dartchery
Dartchery had archers shoot arrows at a dartboard-style target; it was one of eight sports at the first Games and stayed on the programme through 1980 before being dropped for good.
Q 09The name Paralympic is widely said to blend Olympic with which word?
Paraplegic
Paraplegic is a widely repeated origin, since the games began for patients with spinal injuries, though some dictionaries say 'parallel' and the movement now explains 'para' as Greek for 'alongside'.
Q 10The term 'Paralympic' first came into official use at the 1988 Games in which city?
Seoul
Seoul gave the Paralympics the Olympic venues for the first time in 24 years, which is why the 1988 Games came to be known as the first of the modern Paralympic era.
Q 11At which Summer Paralympics were athletes with disabilities other than spinal injuries included for the first time?
Toronto 1976
Toronto 1976 admitted amputees and visually impaired athletes for the first time, yet the Games shrank in another way, as several countries pulled out in protest at South Africa taking part.
Q 12Where were the first Winter Paralympics held in 1976?
Örnsköldsvik, Sweden
Örnsköldsvik, Sweden staged Alpine and cross-country races for amputee and visually impaired skiers; the sport had grown since the war, when injured soldiers tried to get back on their skis.
Q 13Which one rule change lets wheelchair tennis be played on a standard court with standard equipment?
Q 21Which blind American swimmer won 55 Paralympic medals between 1980 and 2004?
Trischa Zorn
Trischa Zorn, blind since birth, won 55 Paralympic swimming medals, 41 of them gold, across seven Games from Arnhem 1980 to Athens 2004.
Q 22Ragnhild Myklebust won 22 gold medals at the Winter Paralympics between 1988 and 2002, competing for which country?
Norway
Norway: Myklebust had polio as a small child, so she raced sitting down, on a sit-ski over snow and a sledge over ice, and was 58 when she won the last of her golds in 2002.
Q 23Which country's intellectual-disability basketball team was stripped of its 2000 gold after most players were found not to be disabled?
Spain
The ball may bounce twice
The ball may bounce twice before it is returned; the rule dates from 1976, when Brad Parks, a freestyle skier paralysed in an accident, began adapting the game from his wheelchair.
Q 14Where has the International Paralympic Committee been headquartered since 1999?
Bonn, Germany
Bonn, Germany won the headquarters against bids from a field of other cities; the committee had been founded ten years earlier in nearby Düsseldorf.
Q 15Which name, from the Latin for 'I move', is given to the three crescents of the Paralympic symbol?
Agitos
Agitos circle a central point to suggest athletes in motion, and they come in red, blue and green because those are the three colours most widely used in the world's national flags.
Q 16Why was the first Paralympic logo, five Korean tae-geuk shapes, redrawn with only three?
It resembled the IOC's emblem
It resembled the IOC's emblem: the five shapes sat in the same pattern and colours as the Olympic symbol, so the IOC asked for a change in 1991 and a three-shape version took over after 1994.
Q 17Which slogan did the International Paralympic Committee launch with its new look in October 2019?
Change Starts with Sport
'Change Starts with Sport' was launched as the committee's brand narrative alongside a redrawn symbol, to spell out what the movement does for society; 'Spirit in Motion' dates from Athens 2004.
Q 18Para powerlifters at the Paralympics compete in which single lift?
Bench press
Bench press is the only lift because the sport is a pure test of upper-body strength, and the best lifters press up to three times their own bodyweight.
Q 19Which single language is the official language of the Paralympic movement?
English
English is the International Paralympic Committee's sole official language; Games announcements are made in English plus the host country's official languages, whereas the IOC also uses French.
Q 20How does the hoop in wheelchair basketball compare with the one in the running game?
The same height
The same height: court, hoop and backboards match the running game, so players shoot from their chairs at a full-height rim, and must bounce or pass the ball after every two pushes.
Spain's team lost its gold after Carlos Ribagorda, an undercover journalist who played in it, revealed that most of the squad had never been tested for a disability; the scandal kept such events out of the Games until 2012.
Q 24'Boosting', a banned technique in Paralympic sport, involves athletes deliberately doing what?
Raising their blood pressure through self-harm
Raising their blood pressure through self-harm, such as breaking a toe or overfilling the bladder, can lift an athlete with a spinal injury by up to 15 per cent; the IPC banned it in 1994.
Q 25Which American gymnast competed at the 1904 Olympics with a wooden leg?
George Eyser
George Eyser, whose left leg was amputated after a train ran over it, won six medals in a single day at St. Louis, three of them gold, competing on a wooden prosthesis.
Q 26Which New Zealand archer competed from a wheelchair at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics?
Neroli Fairhall
Neroli Fairhall took up archery after a motorbike accident paralysed her from the waist down, won Commonwealth Games gold in 1982 and reached the Olympics two years later.
Q 27Britain's Sarah Storey won Paralympic golds as a swimmer before switching to which sport?
Cycling
Cycling: Storey first raced in the pool at 14, took up the bike in 2005 only because an ear infection kept her out of the water, and by 2024 had 19 golds, the most of any British Paralympian.
Q 28Which company manufactured the carbon-fibre 'Flex-Foot Cheetah' blades Oscar Pistorius raced on?
Össur
Össur, the Icelandic prosthetics maker, produced the Flex-Foot Cheetah, a J-shaped carbon-fibre blade invented by American engineer Van Phillips, whose company Össur bought in 2000.
Q 29Which movement, separate from the Paralympics, did Eunice Kennedy Shriver found in 1968 for athletes with intellectual disabilities?
Special Olympics
Special Olympics grew out of a summer camp Shriver ran in her own backyard in the early 1960s, and held its first Games at Soldier Field in Chicago in July 1968.
Q 30Boccia was originally designed for people with which condition?
Cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy: boccia was designed for players with severe impairments and has since opened to others whose motor skills are affected; it joined the Games in 1984 and has no Olympic counterpart.