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50 free Speed Skating trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This speed skating trivia quiz covers both long track and short track, from bone skates on Frisian canals to the climate-controlled ovals of Calgary and Heerenveen. The easy questions handle the size of the two ovals, which way skaters race, Eric Heiden's haul at Lake Placid and how Steven Bradbury won gold from last place. From there it moves into the great careers: Bonnie Blair's distances, Sven Kramer's disastrous lane change, Ireen Wust's record medal count, Apolo Ohno's controversial 1,500 m and Claudia Pechstein's blood-values ban. The harder end is for skating obsessives: the 1763 race on the English Fens, the first women's race in 1805, the only Olympic allround champion, the pack-racing scandal of 1932, the university that built the clap skate, the hell of the 1963 Elfstedentocht, and the Chinese prisoner who received a Swedish gold medal. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the sport, the Olympics and the individual skaters, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Winter Olympics, ice skating and Netherlands quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How long is a standard long-track speed skating oval?
400 m
The ISU standardised the distance in 1892, along with the classic championship distances of 500, 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 metres.
Q 02A short-track speed skating oval measures approximately how long?
111 m
It fits inside an ice hockey rink, which is one reason the discipline is growing faster than long track.
Q 03In which direction are speed skating races run?
Counter-clockwise
In long track, skaters must swap lanes every lap so both cover the same distance; the skater moving to the inside has right of way.
Q 04The International Skating Union, founded in 1892, was the first international federation for what?
Any winter sport
Fifteen national representatives founded it at Scheveningen in the Netherlands.
Q 05The first speed skating race known in any detail was held in 1763 on the Fens of which country?
England
John Lamb of Wisbech won 20 guineas racing to Whittlesey; a Scot had designed the first iron-bladed skate back in 1592.
Q 06Which Dutch town, now speed skating's spiritual home, hosted the first known women's race in 1805?
Heerenveen
Some 130 women raced on a frozen canal before a crowd of 10,000, and a 20-year-old farmer's daughter won.
Q 07The Thialf arena, the Netherlands' great skating temple, is named after a character from which mythology?
Norse
Thialfi was Thor's servant, who had to race a giant; the indoor oval opened in 1986 and will host the 2030 Olympic speed skating.
Q 08Speed skating first appeared at the Olympics in which year?
1924
The Chamonix winter sports week was retroactively declared the first Winter Olympics and included five skating events.
Q 09Who won the first Olympic speed skating gold medal, in the 500 m at Chamonix?
Charles Jewtraw
The American from Lake Placid edged out Norwegians who claimed one of their own had clocked a better time; timing stayed unreliable until electronic clocks arrived decades later.
Q 10Finland's Clas Thunberg is the only person ever to win Olympic gold in which speed skating event?
Allround
It was awarded only at the first Winter Games; Thunberg remains the oldest speed skating champion, winning at 34.
Q 11The 1932 Lake Placid Olympics used which controversial race format, letting the hosts win all four golds?
Mass-start pack racing
World champion Clas Thunberg stayed home in protest, and European nations demanded that mass starts never return to the Games.
Q 12Women's speed skating events were added to the Winter Olympics in which year?
1960
The Squaw Valley Games also introduced artificial ice; the 1956 races on Lake Misurina were the last on natural ice.
Q 13Which Soviet skater was the first to win four individual golds at one Winter Games, in 1964?
Lidiya Skoblikova
Q 21Norway's Johann Olav Koss won three golds at the 1994 Lillehammer Games and later founded which charity?
Right To Play
He set world records in all three wins, then trained as a doctor in Australia before launching the children's organisation in 2000.
Q 22The clap skate has its blade attached to the boot by what?
A hinge at the front
The heel lifts off the blade on every stroke, keeping the steel on the ice longer; a similar idea was patented back in 1894.
Q 23The modern clap skate was developed at a university in which city?
Amsterdam
Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau built his first prototype in 1980; the Dutch women's team adopted it in 1996-97 and world records tumbled.
She swept all four distances at Innsbruck and finished her career with six golds, a total later matched by Ireen Wüst.
Q 14Which Dutch skater won three golds at Sapporo in 1972, missing a fourth only by falling in the 500 m?
Ard Schenk
He also won three straight world all-round titles and helped found a short-lived professional league in 1972.
Q 15Eric Heiden won how many individual gold medals at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics?
5
No other athlete has ever won as many individual golds at one Winter Games; only the Soviet Union and East Germany won more golds than he did.
Q 16After skating, Eric Heiden earned a medical degree from Stanford and became what?
An orthopedic surgeon
He followed his father into the specialty, after a spell as a professional cyclist.
Q 17Eric Heiden was born and raised in which US city?
Madison, Wisconsin
His sister Beth was also a champion skater and cyclist, and the pair helped create a warming hut for local children.
Q 18Bonnie Blair won all of her Olympic gold medals in which two distances?
500 m and 1,000 m
In 1994 she became the first woman to break 39 seconds for 500 m, and her cheering family and friends were nicknamed the 'Blair Bunch'.
Q 19Bonnie Blair grew up in which Illinois city, whose police association helped fund her training in Europe?
Champaign
She competed at four Olympics and shared Sports Illustrated's 1994 Sportsman of the Year honour with Johann Olav Koss.
Q 20Dan Jansen's Olympic story is famous for what happening on the morning of his 500 m race in 1988?
His sister died of leukemia
He fell in that race and again in the 1,000 m; he finally won gold in his last race, the 1,000 m at Lillehammer in 1994.
Q 24The 1998 Winter Olympics, where clap skates produced a flood of world records, were held in which city?
Nagano
Tonny de Jong had become the first European all-round champion on clap skates the previous year, beating the world champion Gunda Niemann.
Q 25The Elfstedentocht is a roughly 200 km skating tour visiting eleven cities in which Dutch province?
Friesland
It has been held only three times in the last 50 years, whenever the natural ice is thick enough.
Q 26The Elfstedentocht was last held in which year?
1997
A 2012 cold snap had hotels booked for two million visitors, but the ice never got thick enough.
Q 27The 1963 Elfstedentocht, nicknamed 'the hell of '63', saw how many of its 10,000 starters finish?
69
Winner Reinier Paping was snow-blind by the finish and became a national hero.
Q 28Which future Dutch king completed the 1986 Elfstedentocht under the pseudonym 'W. A. van Buren'?
Willem-Alexander
Van Buren is a traditional incognito surname of the Dutch royal house.
Q 29What Frisian-derived name is given to spots where Elfstedentocht skaters must walk on their skates?
Kluning points
From the West Frisian klúnje, to run on skates over a carpet; ice has even been transplanted to shore up weak stretches under bridges.
Q 30Short-track speed skating became a full Olympic sport in which year?
1992
It had been a demonstration event at Calgary in 1988; Albertville had just four short-track events.