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50 free Wilma Rudolph trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely, the twentieth of twenty-two children, wore a leg brace until she was twelve, and eight years later was the fastest woman in the world. This quiz follows the whole story: the polio, the weekly bus rides to Nashville for treatment, the high-school basketball star nicknamed Skeeter, and the day Tennessee State coach Ed Temple spotted her and invited her to train with the Tigerbelles. From there it goes to the track: the bronze relay medal at sixteen in Melbourne, the world record at the 1960 trials, the cinder track of Rome's Stadio Olimpico, the wind-aided 100 metres, the near-dropped baton in the relay, and the three gold medals that made her the first American woman to win three at a single Games. It also covers what came after: the nicknames from Italy and France, the homecoming parade she forced Clarksville to integrate, dating Muhammad Ali, retiring at 22 while still world record-holder, teaching second grade, the goodwill trip to West Africa, the foundation, the postage stamp and the Berlin school that carries her name. Easy questions suit anyone who has heard her name; the expert tier is for track and field historians. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on Rudolph and on her coach, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At which Olympic Games did Wilma Rudolph win her three gold medals?
Rome 1960
She won the 100 metres, the 200 metres and the 4 x 100 relay, becoming the first American woman to take three golds at one Games.
Q 02Which childhood disease left Rudolph wearing a leg brace until she was 12?
Polio
Polio, caught at about five, weakened her left leg and foot; she had also survived double pneumonia and scarlet fever, and her family massaged the leg daily until she could walk unaided.
Q 03Rudolph was born prematurely in 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, now part of which Tennessee city?
Clarksville
Clarksville, in Montgomery County near the Kentucky line, absorbed the Saint Bethlehem community where she was born on 23 June 1940; the city later named a boulevard after her and raised a statue.
Q 04Rudolph was the 20th of how many children from her father's two marriages?
22
Her siblings later gave her massage treatments four times a day to help her weakened leg.
Q 05Rudolph and her mother took weekly bus trips for treatment at which Black medical college in Nashville?
Meharry
Meharry Medical College, the Black medical school in Nashville, treated her leg with heat and water therapy; she and her mother made the roughly 50-mile bus trip each week because local care was closed to African Americans.
Q 06What nickname did Rudolph's high school coach C. C. Gray give her because she moved so fast?
Skeeter
Skeeter, short for mosquito, was coach C. C. Gray's name for her: he said she was little, fast and always in his way, and the nickname stuck through her school years.
Q 07In which sport did Rudolph first star at Burt High School before turning to track?
Basketball
Basketball came before track: she followed her older sister Yvonne onto the Burt High School team in eighth grade and earned all-state honours as a guard.
Q 08Which Tennessee State coach spotted the teenage Rudolph and invited her to his summer track camp at 14?
Ed Temple
He coached the Tigerbelles for 44 years and led the US Olympic women's track team in 1960 and 1964.
Q 09What was the nickname of the Tennessee State women's track team Rudolph ran with?
The Tigerbelles
The Tigerbelles, Tennessee State's women's track team, sent 40 athletes to the Olympics and won 34 national team titles under one coach; Rudolph trained with them while still at high school.
Q 10After her first summer camp, Rudolph won all nine events she entered at an AAU meet in which city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia hosted the 1956 AAU meet where she won all nine events she entered; she had earlier lost badly at the Tuskegee Relays in Alabama and vowed to keep competing.
Q 11How old was Rudolph at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, as the youngest member of the US team?
16
At 16 she was the youngest member of the US track and field team in Melbourne, still a junior at Burt High School; she went out in her individual heat but ran in the relay final.
Q 12What medal did Rudolph win in the 4 x 100 relay at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics?
Bronze
Bronze: she ran for an all-Tennessee State quartet that finished third behind Australia and Great Britain in the Melbourne relay final, her only medal of those Games.
Q 13In which event did Wilma Rudolph set an eight-year world record at the 1960 US Olympic trials?
200 m
200 m: at the 1960 Olympic trials in Abilene, Texas, she ran 22.9 seconds, a world record that stood for eight years, while still a Tennessee State sophomore.
Q 21The French nicknamed Rudolph La Perle Noire and, after a famous song, La what?
Chattanooga Choo-Choo
Chattanooga Choo-Choo, borrowed from the 1941 Glenn Miller hit, was the French press's tribute to a Tennessee sprinter; the American press preferred The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth.
Q 22Rudolph became a global star partly because 1960 was the first Olympics with what?
Worldwide TV coverage
Worldwide TV coverage began with Rome, the inaugural Games to be televised internationally; CBS bought the American rights and flew tape to New York nightly, so her three wins reached viewers across Europe and America.
Q 23Rudolph refused to attend her own hometown homecoming celebration unless what changed?
Q 14Why was Rudolph's 11.0-second Rome 100 metres win not ratified as a world record?
The wind was too strong
The wind was too strong: a tailwind of 2.75 metres per second exceeded the 2.0 m/s limit for record purposes, so her 11.0 stood only as the winning time.
Q 15Rudolph was the first American woman to win the Olympic 100 metres since which athlete at the 1936 Games?
Helen Stephens
Helen Stephens, the 'Fulton Flash' from Missouri, won the women's 100 metres in 1936; no American woman took the title again until Rudolph, 24 years later.
Q 16What Olympic record time did Rudolph set in the opening heat of the 200 metres in Rome?
23.2 seconds
Her 23.2 seconds in the opening heat went into the books as the Olympic record; she then won the final on a wet track in a slower 24.0, four-tenths clear of Germany's Jutta Heine.
Q 17Which leg did Rudolph run in the Rome 4 x 100 relay final?
Anchor
Anchor: taking a fumbled final pass from Lucinda Williams, she started behind Germany's Jutta Heine and ran her down on the home straight to win.
Q 18What world record time did the US women's team run in the Rome relay semifinal?
44.4 seconds
44.4 seconds: Martha Hudson, Lucinda Williams, Barbara Jones and Rudolph, all from Tennessee State, set the mark in the semifinal and then won the final in 44.5 despite a poor last exchange.
Q 19The Rome track events took place on what kind of surface at the Stadio Olimpico?
Cinder
Cinder: the Stadio Olimpico track was a traditional crushed-cinder surface, as every Olympic track was until Mexico City introduced a synthetic one in 1968; Rome's athletics were run in intense late-summer heat.
Q 20The Italians gave Rudolph which nickname after Rome?
La Gazzella Nera
La Gazzella Nera, the Black Gazelle, was the Italian press's name for her after her three Rome golds; the French press countered with La Perle Noire, the Black Pearl.
It was integrated
It was integrated: she would not attend unless Black and white residents could celebrate together, so the parade and banquet of 4 October 1960 became the earliest integrated public event in the town's history.
Q 24Rudolph became the first woman invited to compete at which famous indoor track meet?
The Millrose Games
Her stardom gave a huge boost to the indoor circuit in the months after Rome.
Q 25Which government body made the 1961 ten-minute documentary Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion?
The US Information Agency
The US Information Agency, Washington's Cold War public-diplomacy arm, made the ten-minute film for overseas audiences in 1961; she also appeared on To Tell the Truth and The Ed Sullivan Show.
Q 26In which year did Rudolph run her last races, at a US-Soviet meet at Stanford?
1962
1962: at the USA-USSR dual meet in Stanford Stadium that July she won the 100 metres and ran on the winning relay, then retired with her records intact, wanting to leave the sport at her best.
Q 27Rudolph explained skipping the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by comparing herself to which athlete's choice in 1936?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens walked away after his four golds of 1936, and she said she would likewise 'stick with the glory' she already had rather than risk something lacking in Tokyo.
Q 28What was Rudolph's world-record time for the 100 metres, set on July 19, 1961?
11.2 seconds
11.2 seconds, run in Stuttgart on 19 July 1961, took a tenth off the world record and stood for four years; she also held the women's indoor 60-yard mark of 6.9 seconds.
Q 29In 1963 Rudolph made a month-long goodwill trip for the State Department to which region?
West Africa
West Africa: as a State Department goodwill ambassador in 1963 she attended the Friendship Games in Dakar, Senegal, and toured Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Upper Volta, meeting young athletes.
Q 30In May 1963 Rudolph joined a protest in her hometown to desegregate what?
A restaurant
Within a short time the mayor announced that all the city's public facilities would be integrated.