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50 free Surfing trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Surfing trivia questions with answers. Surfing has 3,000 years of history behind it, from Peruvian fishermen on reed boats to Sebastian Steudtner's 86-foot ride at Nazaré. This quiz paddles through the whole story: the Polynesian roots, Captain Cook's crew writing the first accounts, Jack London at Waikiki, Duke Kahanamoku's Olympic golds and his 1914 demonstration in Australia, Tom Blake's first fin, the wetsuit and the thruster, Kelly Slater's eleven world titles, Stephanie Gilmore and Layne Beachley, Bethany Hamilton's comeback, tow-in surfing at Jaws, Pipeline, Mavericks and Teahupo'o, and surfing's arrival at the Tokyo and Tahiti Olympics. Pop culture gets a set too: Gidget, The Endless Summer, the Beach Boys and Point Break. Easy questions ask which state modern surfing comes from and how many world titles Kelly Slater has; the hard ones want the dog Mavericks is named after, the year the wetsuit was invented and the meaning of Teahupo'o. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the sport, its surfers, its breaks and its films, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
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Q 01Modern stand-up surfing is generally thought to have originated where?
Hawaii
Ancient Peruvians rode reed craft thousands of years earlier, but standing on a board was a Polynesian innovation perfected in the islands.
Q 02Which ancient Peruvian culture rode waves on reed boats called caballitos de totora?
Moche
Archaeology puts their use around 200 CE, and local fishermen still ride them today.
Q 03Which member of Cook's expedition first wrote about surfing and completed the captain's journals?
James King
Botanist Joseph Banks had described Tahitian wave-riding on the earlier Endeavour voyage in 1769.
Q 04Which author tried surfing at Waikiki and wrote about it in the 1907 essay 'A Royal Sport'?
Jack London
Missionaries had suppressed the sport as frivolous; Waikiki tourism brought it back.
Q 05In which sport did Duke Kahanamoku win his Olympic gold medals?
Swimming
He took the 100-metre freestyle in 1912 and 1920 and was a five-time Olympic medallist.
Q 06Kahanamoku's 1914 Freshwater Beach surfing exhibition is a founding moment for the sport in which country?
Australia
He built the board from a piece of pine bought at a local hardware store; the surf club still has it.
Q 07How many men did Kahanamoku rescue with his surfboard off Newport Beach in 1925?
Eight
The publicity persuaded lifeguards across the US to adopt surfboards as standard rescue equipment.
Q 08Who is credited with first adding a fin to a surfboard, in 1935?
Tom Blake
He bolted the keel from an old speedboat to a board; the Wisconsin-born surfer was one of the sport's great innovators.
Q 09Which Australian surfer designed the three-fin 'thruster' in 1980?
Simon Anderson
Thirty years on it remains the most popular fin set-up on shortboards.
Q 10Who invented the modern neoprene wetsuit in 1952?
Hugh Bradner
He was a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley; the suits went on sale in the mid-1950s.
Q 11How many World Surf League world titles has Kelly Slater won?
Eleven
He was the youngest champion at 20 in 1992 and won his eighth Pipe Masters at 49.
Q 12Kelly Slater grew up in which Florida town?
Cocoa Beach
He still lives there and played lifeguard Jimmy Slade on seven episodes of Baywatch in the early 1990s.
Q 13Which sportswear giant sponsored Kelly Slater from 1990 until 2014?
Quiksilver
After leaving he co-founded the sustainable clothing brand Outerknown with Kering.
Q 14How many women's world titles has Stephanie Gilmore won, the record?
Q 21What height did Guinness certify for the record wave surfed at Nazaré in October 2020?
86 feet
Sebastian Steudtner rode the 26.2-metre wave at Nazaré, Portugal, in October 2020; Guinness later ratified an even larger Steudtner ride from 2024.
Q 22What underwater feature makes the waves at Nazaré so enormous?
A submarine canyon
The Nazaré Canyon focuses and converges incoming swell; Garrett McNamara's 78-footer there in 2011 started the record run.
Q 23Which Brazilian set the women's big-wave record of 73 feet at Nazaré in 2020?
Maya Gabeira
Rodrigo Koxa, also Brazilian, had held the overall record with an 80-foot wave in 2017.
Eight
She is the only surfer ever to win the world title as a rookie, then took four in a row from 2007 to 2010.
Q 15Which Australian is the only surfer, male or female, to win six consecutive world titles?
Layne Beachley
She won seven in all, and was born Tania Gardner before being adopted by a Manly family.
Q 16At what age did Carissa Moore become the youngest surfer ever to win a world title?
18
She unseated four-time champion Stephanie Gilmore in 2011 and went on to win five titles.
Q 17Who won the first-ever Olympic gold medals in surfing at Tokyo 2020?
Ítalo Ferreira and Carissa Moore
Moore also won the world title that year, the first surfer to do both in one season.
Q 18Where was the Tokyo 2020 Olympic surfing competition actually held?
Tsurigasaki Beach, Chiba
It sits about 40 miles outside Tokyo; Olympic surfing is limited to shortboards.
Q 19The Paris 2024 surfing events were held about how far from Paris, a record for an Olympic medal event?
15,000 km
Competitors at Teahupo'o in Tahiti stayed on a ship, the first floating Olympic village.
Q 20The name Teahupo'o loosely translates as what?
'Place of skulls'
It refers to an old battle in the village; the wave breaks over reef as shallow as 20 inches.
Q 24Big wave surfing is generally defined as riding waves of at least what height?
20 feet
Riders use boards known as 'guns', or are towed in behind jet skis on shorter towboards.
Q 25Laird Hamilton and friends pioneered tow-in surfing in the early 1990s at which Maui break?
Jaws (Pe'ahi)
They were dubbed the 'Strapped Crew' because their feet were strapped to their boards; Riding Giants tells the story.
Q 26The Banzai Pipeline breaks off which Hawaiian island?
Oahu
It sits off Ehukai Beach on the North Shore and got its name from filmmaker Bruce Brown in December 1961.
Q 27What is the name of the famous right-hander that peels away opposite Pipeline on a north swell?
Backdoor
On big days the deeper Second Reef starts breaking with longer walls.
Q 28Mavericks in California is named after what?
A German shepherd dog
Maverick swam out with three surfers in 1967 and seemed to enjoy it more than anyone; Jeff Clark later surfed it alone for years.
Q 29Which Hawaiian big-wave legend died surfing Mavericks in December 1994?
Mark Foo
He had flown in with Ken Bradshaw and Mike Parsons during a week of huge swells.
Q 30Eddie Aikau, namesake of 'The Eddie' big-wave contest, was the first lifeguard at which bay?
Waimea Bay
He saved more than 500 people there and died in 1978 paddling for help from the voyaging canoe Hokule'a.