Sports Science
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50 free Sports Science trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sports science is the study of what happens to the body and the equipment when people run, leap, throw and swim. It borrows from physiology, physics, medicine, nutrition and psychology, and it explains everything from a swerving free kick to the tiredness that hits late in a long race. This quiz covers the core ideas: how muscles get their energy, what the heart and lungs do under effort, and how training methods and fitness measures work. It also takes in the physics of spin and technique, famous injuries and operations, what athletes eat and drink, the mind under pressure, and the fight against doping, along with the researchers and coaches who shaped the field. It suits PE and sport science students revising for an exam, coaches and gym-goers, and any fan who likes to know why as well as who won.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dick Fosbury's back-first 'flop', seen by the world at the 1968 Olympics, transformed which athletics event?
High jump
High jump has been ruled by the flop ever since: arching backwards over the bar can let a jumper's centre of mass pass beneath it while the body clears.
Q 02The hundreds of dimples covering a golf ball help it fly much farther mainly by doing what?
Reducing air drag
Reducing air drag is the trick: dimples make the thin layer of air around the ball turbulent, so it clings on longer and leaves a narrower wake behind.
Q 03Which sports drink did University of Florida scientists create in 1965 for the school's own athletes?
Gatorade
Gatorade is named after the Florida Gators, whose players drank it to replace the carbohydrates they burned and the water and electrolytes they sweated out.
Q 04Tommy John surgery, first performed on a baseball pitcher in 1974, rebuilds a ligament in which joint?
Elbow
Elbow ligament reconstruction was devised by Dodgers team doctor Frank Jobe, who put the odds of the first operation succeeding at one in 100.
Q 05Which phenomenon, named after a German physicist, makes a spinning football or baseball curve through the air?
Magnus effect
The Magnus effect puts a sideways lift force on a spinning ball and bends its flight, and the same physics has been used to propel rotor ships.
Q 06Muscle soreness that peaks a day or two after hard exercise was long wrongly blamed on which substance?
Lactic acid
Lactic acid returns to normal levels within an hour of exercise, so it cannot cause an ache that arrives a day later; tiny tears in muscle fibres are the likelier culprit.
Q 07Which class of heart drugs has been used in archery and shooting to slow the pulse and steady the hands?
Beta blockers
Beta blockers lower the heart rate and reduce tremor, which is why some precision sports ban them; musicians have taken them for stage fright too.
Q 08Whey protein, a staple of gym shakes, is a by-product of making which everyday food?
Cheese
Cheese production leaves whey as the liquid that remains once milk has curdled, turning a dairy leftover into a major ingredient of recovery drinks.
Q 09Anders Ericsson's study of which musicians inspired the '10,000-hour rule' of practice popularised by Malcolm Gladwell?
Violinists
Violinists in his study had averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice by age 20, yet Ericsson himself later called the rule wrong in several ways.
Q 10Which English athlete, later a neurologist, ran the first mile in under four minutes in 1954?
Roger Bannister
Roger Bannister did it on minimal training while working as a junior doctor, and later said he was prouder of his research on the nervous system.
Q 11A common rule of thumb estimates a person's maximum heart rate as 220 minus which figure?
Age in years
Age in years gives only a loose estimate: Olympic rowers in their twenties have shown maximum heart rates anywhere from 160 to 220 beats a minute.
Q 12Marathon runners 'hit the wall' when the liver and muscles run out of which stored carbohydrate?
Glycogen
Glycogen is stored mainly in the liver and skeletal muscle, and cyclists call the sudden fatigue of running out of it 'the bonk'.
Q 13Which molecule, often called the energy currency of the cell, directly powers every muscle contraction?
ATP
ATP drives nerve impulses and chemical synthesis as well as muscle contraction, and it is found in all known forms of life.
Q 21The four-minute 'Tabata' interval workout began as a training routine for Japan's national team in which sport?
Speed skating
Speed skating coach Kouichi Irisawa used the routine with Japan's team, and Izumi Tabata's 1996 study found its four-minute sessions matched the aerobic gains of hour-long steady rides.
Q 22Which training method of explosive jumps, pioneered by Soviet athletes, was given its name by American coach Fred Wilt?
Plyometrics
Plyometrics began as the 'shock method' of Soviet scientist Yuri Verkhoshansky; Wilt coined the word after watching Soviet athletes prepare for their events.
Q 23Holding a plank, in which muscles strain without changing length, is which kind of exercise?
Isometric
Q 14Which gym supplement, stored in muscle with a phosphate attached, fuels the first seconds of a sprint?
Creatine
Creatine in its phosphate form can rebuild the muscle's energy supply during the first five to eight seconds of an all-out effort.
Q 15Which muscle fibres, red with myoglobin and hard to tire, suit endurance events such as distance running?
Slow-twitch
Slow-twitch fibres make their energy aerobically and keep going, whereas fast fibres contract two to three times as quickly but tire far sooner.
Q 16Which hormone, made mainly in the kidneys and abused by endurance cheats, triggers the making of red blood cells?
EPO
EPO, short for erythropoietin, is released when the kidneys sense low oxygen; the Festina cycling scandal exposed its use before any test for it existed.
Q 17Which metal sits at the core of haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen to working muscles?
Iron
Iron lets each haemoglobin molecule bind and carry up to four oxygen molecules at a time from the lungs to the tissues.
Q 18Drinking far too much water during a marathon can dangerously dilute which mineral in the blood?
Sodium
Sodium levels fall when runners drink more fluid than their kidneys can excrete, a disorder that can show up as late as 24 hours after the race.
Q 19Which sheet of muscle, separating the chest from the abdomen, does most of the work of breathing?
Diaphragm
The diaphragm contracts to enlarge the chest cavity, and the resulting drop in pressure is what draws air into the lungs.
Q 20Which running workout, devised in the 1930s by Gösta Holmér, has a Swedish name meaning 'speed play'?
Fartlek
Fartlek alternates faster and slower running, often over natural hilly terrain, blending steady distance work with interval training.
Isometric comes from Greek words for 'equal' and 'measuring', because the muscle's length and the joint's angle stay the same throughout the effort.
Q 24Which knee ligament do female athletes rupture two to eight times as often as men in jumping sports?
ACL
The ACL, or anterior cruciate ligament, tears most often in sports with cutting and jumping, and a complete tear raises the odds of knee arthritis later.
Q 25Which tendon, the thickest in the human body, anchors the calf muscles at the back of the ankle?
Achilles
The Achilles tendon is first recorded under that name in 1693, by Flemish anatomist Philip Verheyen; earlier anatomists had called it the cord of Hippocrates.
Q 26Which brain disease, tied to repeated head blows, did Bennet Omalu identify in former NFL player Mike Webster?
CTE
CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, was known in the 1920s as 'punch drunk syndrome' because it was first studied in boxers.
Q 27In the RICE formula for treating sprains, introduced by Gabe Mirkin in 1978, what does the C stand for?
Compression
Compression sits beside rest, ice and elevation, yet Mirkin himself later warned that prolonged icing and complete rest could delay recovery.
Q 28Which muscle, the largest in the human body, is the main one straightening the hip in running?
Gluteus maximus
The gluteus maximus gives the human hip its shape; other primates have much flatter hips and cannot stay standing upright.
Q 29Which group of three muscles at the back of the thigh is a classic site of strains in sprinters?
Hamstrings
Hamstrings bend the knee and extend the hip, and they tend to tear late in a sprinter's leg swing, while the muscle is lengthening under load.
Q 30Which tactic lets a cyclist in the peloton save energy by riding closely behind another rider's wheel?
Drafting
Drafting cuts wind resistance for the rider behind and, at high speed, can even slightly reduce the effort of the leader in front.