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This winter sports trivia quiz has 80 free questions with answers and runs across every discipline that needs snow or ice. Winter Olympics history comes first: Chamonix 1924, the year the Summer and Winter Games split, the city that gave the Games back, the army that hauled snow into Innsbruck, Sarajevo's surprise, Calgary's two underdog films, Nagano's debuts and Norway's medal record. Then the sports themselves. Alpine and cross-country skiing, ski jumping's K-point and the V-style, biathlon's military roots, Nordic combined, snowboarding from Rebagliati to Shaun White and Chloe Kim, figure skating from Sonja Henie to Torvill and Dean and Yuna Kim, speed skating from Eric Heiden to Sven Kramer, the Miracle on Ice, the Stanley Cup, curling's Scottish abbey records, and the three sliding sports and how to tell them apart. The Iditarod and Eddie the Eagle get a look-in too. Easy questions suit anyone who watches every four years; the hard ones ask who Bjørndalen overtook and which Games first had an athletes' village. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924 in which French resort?
Chamonix
It was billed as 'International Winter Sports Week' and only declared the first Winter Olympics retroactively in 1925.
Q 02Until which year were the Summer and Winter Olympics held in the same year?
1992
The IOC brought the next Winter Games forward to 1994 to start the alternating cycle.
Q 03How many times has the United States hosted the Winter Olympics, more than any other country?
Four
Lake Placid 1932 and 1980, Squaw Valley 1960 and Salt Lake City 2002; France and Italy have three each.
Q 04Norway set the record for most gold medals at a single Winter Olympics in 2026 with how many?
18
It took 41 medals in total, another record.
Q 05Sapporo 1972 was the first Winter Olympics held outside which two continents?
North America and Europe
Canada boycotted the 1972 and 1976 hockey tournaments over the ban on its professional players.
Q 06Which US city was awarded the 1976 Winter Olympics but gave them back after voters refused to fund them?
Denver
Innsbruck stepped in with half the usual preparation time, reusing its 1964 venues.
Q 07Innsbruck 1964 was so short of snow that which organisation was called in to haul it to the venues?
The Austrian army
Soviet skater Lidia Skoblikova won all four women's speed-skating events there.
Q 08Squaw Valley 1960 was the first Winter Olympics to feature which of these?
A dedicated athletes' village
IBM also supplied the first computer to tabulate results, and women's speed skating debuted.
Q 09In which sport did Eddie Eagan, one of two athletes with Summer and Winter golds, win his 1920 title?
Boxing
He added a bobsleigh gold at Lake Placid in 1932.
Q 10Which host city was chosen for the 1984 Winter Olympics ahead of favourites Sapporo and Gothenburg?
Sarajevo
It remains the only Winter Games held in Yugoslavia.
Q 11Which film about a last-placed British ski jumper at Calgary 1988 joined Cool Runnings as an underdog classic?
Eddie the Eagle
Michael Edwards finished last but set a British record of 73.5 metres.
Q 12How long did Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards hold the British ski jumping record?
Until 2001
He also set a stunt record by jumping over six buses.
Q 13What happened to Jamaica's four-man bobsleigh on its third run at Calgary 1988?
It crashed and did not finish
They came back in 1994 and finished 14th, ahead of the United States.
Q 21Figure skating replaced its 6.0 scoring with a new judging system after a scandal at which Games?
Salt Lake City 2002
The ISU Judging System became mandatory in 2006.
Q 22Tonya Harding was the first American woman to land which jump in international competition, in 1991?
Triple Axel
Only Japan's Midori Ito had done it before; Harding was banned for life in 1994 over the Kerrigan attack.
Q 23Eric Heiden won how many individual gold medals in speed skating at Lake Placid 1980?
Five
That was more than any nation except the Soviet Union and East Germany, and the record still stands.
Q 14Nagano 1998 was the first Winter Games with more than how many athletes?
2,000
Women's ice hockey also debuted there, with the Americans taking gold.
Q 15Snowboarding joined the Olympics at Nagano 1998; what happened to first gold medallist Ross Rebagliati?
He was briefly stripped of his medal for cannabis
The IOC reinstated the Canadian after an appeal.
Q 16Shaun White won how many Olympic gold medals in halfpipe snowboarding?
Three
He also holds the record for the most X Games golds and now plays guitar in a band called the Bad Things.
Q 17Chloe Kim became the youngest woman to win Olympic snowboarding gold at PyeongChang 2018 at what age?
17
In Beijing 2022 she became the first woman to win two halfpipe golds.
Q 18Sonja Henie won three straight Olympic figure skating titles; in which years?
1928, 1932, 1936
She then became one of Hollywood's highest-paid stars in films like Sun Valley Serenade.
Q 19Torvill and Dean's gold-medal ice dance at the 1984 Winter Olympics was skated to which piece of music?
Boléro
They received twelve perfect 6.0s, and more than 24 million Britons watched.
Q 20Figure skating was the first winter sport at any Olympics; where did it debut?
1908 London
Ice hockey followed at the 1920 Summer Games in Antwerp.
Q 24American speed skater Bonnie Blair won how many Olympic gold medals across four Games?
Five
She added one bronze after finishing eighth in the 500 metres on her 1984 debut.
Q 25Short-track star Apolo Ohno won eight Olympic medals and which TV dance competition in 2007?
Dancing with the Stars
His tally was two golds, two silvers and four bronzes.
Q 26A long-track speed skating oval is how long?
400 m
Short track uses a 111-metre oval on an ice-hockey-sized rink.
Q 27Sven Kramer won the Olympic 5000 metres at three consecutive Games; which?
2010, 2014, 2018
He was born in Heerenveen, home of the Thialf ice hall.
Q 28The Dutch Elfstedentocht is a skating race linking the eleven cities of which province?
Friesland
It was first held as a competition in 1909 and only runs when the ice is thick enough.
Q 29What was the score in the 1980 'Miracle on Ice' game?
4-3
The Americans still had to beat Finland two days later to take the gold.
Q 30Which ABC broadcaster asked 'Do you believe in miracles?' as the 1980 US hockey game ended?
Al Michaels
Coach Herb Brooks's team was almost entirely amateur; four had minor-league experience at most.