Track and Field Trivia
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106 free Track and Field trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
52 free Track and field trivia questions with answers. Track and field is the oldest sport at the Olympics and the simplest to explain: run faster, jump higher, throw farther. The stories underneath are anything but simple, and this quiz digs into them: why a marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards, who ran the greatest 45 minutes in sport, why Dick Fosbury went over backwards, and how many years Bob Beamon's jump survived. The early questions cover the basics any Olympics viewer knows: Bolt's 100 m record, the ten events of the decathlon, the barefoot marathon champion. The later ones are for people who follow Diamond League meets: false-start rules, relay changeover zones, hammer weights, and which Kenyan is the only triple Olympic 1500 m champion. Every answer has been checked against a published source and carries a link, so you can settle an argument in the stands. Good for coaches, club runners and anyone counting down to the next Games.
30 of 106 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city did Usain Bolt run his 100 m world record of 9.58 seconds in 2009?
Berlin
Berlin hosted the 2009 World Championships, where Bolt cut 0.11 seconds from his own record, the biggest drop since electronic timing began, then took the same slice off his 200 m mark days later.
Q 02Why did Usain Bolt lose a 2008 Olympic gold?
Teammate's doping
A teammate's doping cost him the medal: Nesta Carter's stored 2008 sample failed a retest, so Jamaica's whole 4x100 m relay team lost its Beijing gold and Bolt's tally fell from nine to eight.
Q 03How many events make up the decathlon?
Ten
They run over two days, from the 100 m to the 1500 m; the winner is traditionally called the world's greatest athlete, a line King Gustav V used on Jim Thorpe in 1912.
Q 04Which event closes the decathlon?
1500 metres
1500 metres is the tenth and final decathlon event, run at the end of day two after the javelin; each second gained or lost there is worth about six points, so it can swing the standings.
Q 05Which Frenchman set the decathlon world record of 9,126 points on home soil in 2018?
Kevin Mayer
Kevin Mayer scored 9,126 points in Talence in September 2018, weeks after three long-jump fouls knocked him out of the European Championships, and took the record from Ashton Eaton's 9,045.
Q 06Which race ends the heptathlon?
800 metres
800 metres is the last of the seven events, run on day two after the long jump and javelin; the title goes to whoever has scored the most points overall, not to the first across the line.
Q 07Who set the heptathlon world record of 7,291 points at the Seoul Olympics?
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee had missed the 1984 Olympic title by just five points; in Seoul she beat her own world record with 7,291 and also won the long jump gold.
Q 08Which Belgian became the first athlete to win three Olympic multi-event golds, in the heptathlon?
Nafissatou Thiam
Nafissatou Thiam won at Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024; in Rio her 1.98 m high jump inside the heptathlon would have won the individual high jump gold.
Q 09What is the official distance of a marathon?
42.195 kilometres
42.195 kilometres is 26 miles 385 yards; the first Olympic marathons were run over roughly 40 km, and the longer distance only later became the fixed standard.
Q 10The marathon takes its name from the legend of which Greek messenger?
Pheidippides
Pheidippides is the messenger of legend who ran about 40 km from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC, announced the victory over the Persians and collapsed dead.
Q 11Which Ethiopian won the 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome running barefoot?
Abebe Bikila
Abebe Bikila, a member of Haile Selassie's imperial guard, won in Rome barefoot in a world-best 2:15:16 and defended the title in Tokyo in 1964, this time wearing shoes.
Q 12What was the name of the 2019 Vienna event where Eliud Kipchoge ran the marathon distance in under two hours?
INEOS 1:59 Challenge
INEOS 1:59 Challenge was the name; a rotating team of 41 pacemakers meant the 1:59:40 never counted as a record, and the first official sub-two-hour marathon came only in 2026.
Q 13Which runner broke Eliud Kipchoge's marathon world record at the 2023 Chicago Marathon?
Kelvin Kiptum
Q 21Pole vaulter Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis competes for Sweden but was born and raised in which US state?
Louisiana
Louisiana: Duplantis was born in Lafayette to an American father who pole vaulted and a Swedish mother, a former heptathlete, and chose to compete for her country.
Q 22Who won three straight Olympic shot put titles from 2016 and set a 23.56 m world record in 2023?
Ryan Crouser
Ryan Crouser threw 23.56 m in Los Angeles with a new 'step-across' start he had devised himself, beating the record he took from Randy Barnes in 2021.
Q 23Why was the men's javelin redesigned in 1986?
To shorten throws and stop flat landings
Kelvin Kiptum ran 2:00:35 in Chicago on 8 October 2023, taking 34 seconds off Kipchoge's mark; he was killed in a road accident in February 2024, aged 24.
Q 14Which is the world's oldest annual marathon, first run in 1897?
Boston
Boston was first run on 19 April 1897, a year after the Athens Olympic marathon inspired it; 15 men started and John McDermott won in 2:55:10.
Q 15Which runner won the 5,000 m, 10,000 m and marathon at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics?
Emil Zátopek
Emil Zátopek had never raced a marathon before the Olympic one, and still won it for his third gold of the Games.
Q 16Which American won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens won the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and 4x100 m relay; a year earlier he had set five world records and tied a sixth within an hour at a college meet in Ann Arbor.
Q 17Whose long jump at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics added 55 cm to the world record?
Bob Beamon
Bob Beamon's 8.90 m skipped a whole barrier: no one had yet jumped 28 feet and he sailed past 29, a mark that lasted almost 23 years.
Q 18Who set the men's long jump world record of 8.95 m at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships?
Mike Powell
Mike Powell jumped 8.95 m in the fifth round; Carl Lewis had passed the old record in round four with a wind-aided 8.91 m, and his legal 8.87 m reply fell short.
Q 19The back-first high jump technique that won gold at the 1968 Olympics is named after which American?
Dick Fosbury
Dick Fosbury cleared 2.24 m for gold in Mexico City; landing on the neck and shoulders only became safe once padded mats replaced sand pits.
Q 20Who cleared 2.45 m in 1993 to set a men's high jump world record that lasted more than 30 years?
Javier Sotomayor
Javier Sotomayor was already world record holder in 1988, but Cuba boycotted the Seoul Olympics, so his gold medal had to wait until Barcelona 1992.
To shorten throws and stop flat landings, the centre of gravity was moved 4 cm forward after Uwe Hohn's 104.80 m in 1984; the new spec made the javelin nose-dive sooner and land point first.
Q 24Which ancient Greek statue by Myron shows an athlete wound up and about to throw?
Discobolus
Discobolus was cast in bronze by Myron around 450 BC, but the original is lost and the figure survives only through Roman copies.
Q 25Which Olympic race is run over the tallest barriers?
110 m hurdles
110 m hurdles barriers stand 42 inches (106.7 cm) high; a runner may clatter into them without penalty and is disqualified only for knocking one down on purpose.
Q 26Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won 2024 Olympic gold with a world record in which event?
400 m hurdles
400 m hurdles: her 50.37 in the Paris final was the sixth time she had broken the world record, and in 2025 she switched to the flat 400 m and won the world title.
Q 27Andre De Grasse anchored which country to men's 4x100 m relay gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics?
Canada
Canada won in 37.50 seconds; the United States crossed the line seventh and was then disqualified because its first baton exchange came outside the 30-metre passing zone.
Q 28At the Paris 2024 Olympics, a sprinter who reacted to the gun faster than what was ruled to have false-started?
0.1 seconds
0.1 seconds is the limit because tests suggest nobody can hear the gun and react any faster, so a quicker start is treated as a guess and the sprinter is disqualified.
Q 29Which piece of sprint equipment did athletics officials at first ban as a mechanical aid?
Starting blocks
Starting blocks are credited to Australian sprinter Charlie Booth, who built them because runners then dug footholds in the track; they later became compulsory in sprint races.
Q 30How long is lane one of a standard outdoor running track?
400 metres
400 metres is one lap of the inside lane; each lane further out is a longer lap, which is why 400 m runners start from staggered blocks.