Usain Bolt Trivia
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45 free Usain Bolt trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Usain Bolt is the fastest human ever timed, holder of the 100 m, 200 m and 4 x 100 m world records and the only sprinter to win the Olympic 100 and 200 at three consecutive Games. This quiz covers the whole story: the cricket-mad boy from Sherwood Content, the practical joke that got him detained by police, the world junior title won with his shoes on the wrong feet, coach Glen Mills, the world records in New York, Beijing and Berlin, the chest-slap celebration, the Daegu false start, the London and Rio doubles, the stripped relay gold, the bronze in his farewell race and the strange afterlives as a footballer, scooter entrepreneur and fraud victim. Easy questions ask which country he ran for and his 100 m world record; harder ones cover the Berlin Wall segment, the size of his scoliosis and who beat him in his last final. It suits athletics fans, Olympic trivia buffs, and quiz nights that want a sports round everyone can enjoy. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Bolt and his championship races, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Bolt's 100 m world record, set in 2009?
9.58
9.58 took more than a tenth of a second off his own year-old record; Tyson Gay ran 9.71 in the same final, then the third-fastest time ever, and was still well beaten.
Q 02What is Bolt's 200 m world record, also set in 2009?
19.19
19.19 took 0.11 off the mark he had set at the Beijing Olympics; Shawn Crawford, the 2004 Olympic champion, trailed in fourth and said it felt like being in a video game.
Q 03Bolt completed his third straight Olympic 100 m and 200 m double at the Games in which city?
Rio
Rio in 2016 made it three Games running, which no other sprinter has done; weeks earlier a hamstring tear had forced him out of Jamaica's trials and he needed a medical exemption to be picked.
Q 04In which small Jamaican town was Bolt born on 21 August 1986?
Sherwood Content
Sherwood Content, a village in rural Trelawny, lost him at 16: Jamaica's prime minister personally arranged a house in Kingston so that he could train with the national coaches.
Q 05A coach in which sport at Bolt's high school first urged him to try athletics?
Cricket
Cricket was his first love: he was a fast bowler who wanted to be the next Courtney Walsh, until his coach saw him sprint and sent him to the track.
Q 06Police held the schoolboy Bolt over which prank at the CARIFTA Trials?
Hiding in a van before his final
Hiding in a van before his final got him held by a policeman and his coach blamed by the local community; Bolt still went on to set championship records at the CARIFTA Games.
Q 07What did a nervous 15-year-old Bolt do before winning the 2002 World Junior 200 m?
Put his shoes on the wrong feet
Put his shoes on the wrong feet: he noticed in time, won in front of his home crowd in Kingston, and says the fright cured him of pre-race nerves for good.
Q 08Which part of a 100 m race did the 6 ft 5 in Bolt call his weak point?
The start
The start: he said he had to work hard on leaving the blocks, and his coach cited that sluggish getaway when resisting his wish to race the 100 m at all.
Q 09In a 2012 broadband advert, Bolt impersonated which British tycoon?
Richard Branson
Richard Branson was the target: Bolt took over the Virgin founder's office and put on his trademark goatee to sell the idea of broadband as fast as a sprinter.
Q 10At 17, Bolt became the first junior in history to run what?
Sub-20 200 m
A sub-20 200 m: his 19.93 at the 2004 CARIFTA Games broke the world junior record; US colleges offered him scholarships, and he turned them all down to stay and train in Jamaica.
Q 11Which coach took Bolt on after the 2004 Olympics and guided him to all his world records?
Glen Mills
Glen Mills first wanted him to step up in distance, and only let him try the 100 m after Bolt met his challenge of breaking the Jamaican 200 m record.
Q 12At the Athens 2004 Olympics, his Games debut, how did Bolt fare in the 200 m?
Eliminated in round one
Eliminated in round one: just turned 18 and carrying a leg injury, he ran 21.05 and went home, the last time he left an Olympics without a gold medal.
Q 13Whose 36-year-old Jamaican 200 m record did Bolt break in 2007 to earn the right to run the 100 m?
Don Quarrie
Q 21What gift did the host city's mayor give Bolt after the 2009 World Championships?
A three-ton section of the old Wall
A three-ton section of the old Wall, 12 feet high, came from Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit, who said Bolt had shown that 'one can tear down walls that had been considered as insurmountable'.
Q 22What happened to Bolt in the 2011 world 100 m final in Daegu?
He was disqualified for a false start
He was disqualified for a false start under the one-strike rule brought in the year before; days later he was back to win the 200 m and anchor Jamaica to a relay world record.
Q 23Which training partner of Bolt won the world 100 m title in Daegu?
Don Quarrie, the 1976 Olympic champion, was the bend runner Bolt had studied and admired; Bolt's 19.75 took 0.11 seconds off a national record Quarrie had held for 36 years.
Q 14Where did Bolt set his first 100 m world record, 9.72, on 31 May 2008?
Icahn Stadium, New York
Icahn Stadium, New York, saw it on a rain-soaked track in what was only his fifth serious 100 m race, an event his coach had not wanted him to run at all.
Q 15Whose 100 m world record of 9.74 did Bolt take in 2008?
Asafa Powell
Asafa Powell had set the 9.74 record in Rieti, Italy, in September 2007; the fellow Jamaican later ran the anchor leg on Bolt's Beijing 2008 relay team.
Q 16Which IOC president rebuked Bolt for his conduct at the Beijing 100 m finish?
Jacques Rogge
Jacques Rogge said Bolt should show more respect for his rivals; Bolt insisted he was just happy, though he later admitted the rebuke made him worry he had overdone it.
Q 17Whose 200 m world record of 19.32, set at Atlanta 1996, did Bolt break in Beijing?
Michael Johnson
Michael Johnson was one of Bolt's boyhood idols, and his 19.32 had stood for 12 years; Bolt took two hundredths off it despite running into a headwind.
Q 18Bolt's Beijing double made him the first man to hold both sprint world records since what became mandatory?
Fully automatic timing
Fully automatic timing became compulsory for records in 1977, ending hand-timed marks that flattered sprinters by roughly a quarter of a second.
Q 19Why was Jamaica stripped of its Beijing 2008 sprint relay gold in 2017?
A teammate's retest was positive
A teammate's retest was positive: Nesta Carter's frozen 2008 sample showed a banned stimulant when reanalysed, so the whole relay team lost its golds and Bolt's sweep of three golds at three straight Games was gone.
Q 20Bolt's 2009 world records came in the Berlin stadium where which American sprinter had become a legend decades earlier?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens won four golds there in 1936; Bolt arrived 73 years later only months after a car crash, claiming to be just 85% fit, and broke both sprint world records.
Yohan Blake
Yohan Blake won the Daegu final in 9.92, then beat Bolt over both sprints at the 2012 Jamaican trials, only to finish second to him in both at the London Olympics.
Q 24After anchoring Jamaica to a relay world record at London 2012, Bolt copied which British runner's celebration?
Mo Farah
Mo Farah's 'Mobot' got the tribute: Bolt had just watched his friend win the 5,000 m, made the M sign as he crossed the line in 36.84, and later joined him on the podium to swap poses.
Q 25Which American rival did Bolt beat by one hundredth of a second for the 2015 world 100 m title?
Justin Gatlin
Justin Gatlin arrived on a 28-race unbeaten run and ran 9.77 in his semi-final, but faltered in the last strides of the final and Bolt came past, 9.79 to 9.80.
Q 26Which rival shared a laugh with Bolt as they finished a 2016 Olympic 200 m semi-final?
Andre De Grasse
Andre De Grasse sprinted up to Bolt's shoulder hoping to tire him before the final; they crossed the line chatting and laughing, and the next day Bolt beat the Canadian to gold.
Q 27Where did Bolt finish in his final individual race, the 100 m at the 2017 World Championships in London?
Third
Third in 9.95, behind two Americans: it was the only Olympic or world 100 m final that Bolt ever ran and lost.
Q 28How did Bolt's very last race, the 2017 World Championship 4 × 100 m relay final, end?
He pulled up injured
He pulled up injured with cramp in his hamstring on the anchor leg as Great Britain won; minutes later he got to his feet and limped across the line with his team-mates' help.
Q 29In 2013, Bolt became a playable character in which hit mobile game?
Temple Run 2
Temple Run 2 sold him as an extra character in Jamaica's yellow and green, with a special power to surge ahead at 'record-breaking pace'; a limited-time offer, he was later made permanent.
Q 30In 2009, aged 23, Bolt was admitted to which of his country's national orders?
The Order of Jamaica
The Order of Jamaica made him, at 23, its youngest member to that date and gave him the title 'The Honourable'; around the same time a highway was renamed after him.