Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 19

The correct answer is B, Berlin 1936. Both Indian games were demonstrated at the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936, the display being arranged by the Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal of Amravati in Maharashtra, and this remains the only Olympic appearance either sport has made. A demonstration sport is shown to the public at the Games but carries no medals. A is wrong because the Los Angeles Games of 1932 are remembered in Indian sport for the hockey team's gold, not for kabaddi or kho-kho. C is wrong because the London Games of 1948 were the first the independent Indian contingent attended, and the hockey gold there is the famous fact, not an indigenous games display. D is wrong because the Helsinki Games of 1952 are remembered for K. D. Jadhav's bronze in wrestling, India's first individual Olympic medal.

The correct answer is C, ten. A pool built to the long course standard is marked into ten lanes of 2.5 metres each across its 25 metre width. Only the eight middle lanes are used for racing; the two outside lanes are left empty so that the wash thrown up by the swimmers is absorbed rather than reflected back across the field. This is why a final has eight swimmers although the pool shows ten lanes, and why option B, eight, is the trap in this question: eight is the number of competitors and of racing lanes, not of lanes marked in the pool. Option A is wrong because six lane pools are common in schools and small clubs but not at this level. Option D is wrong because twelve lanes are not part of any aquatic standard. Lane ropes carry coloured floats to mark the last five metres before the wall.

The correct answer is C, rowing. World Aquatics recognises six disciplines, namely swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving. Rowing is played on water but is governed by a separate international body, World Rowing, long known as FISA, and its Olympic events are listed under rowing, not aquatics. Option A is wrong as a choice because water polo is one of the six and was in fact the first team sport at the modern Olympic Games, in Paris in 1900. Option B is wrong because artistic swimming, called synchronised swimming until a recent change of name, has been an Olympic aquatic event since Los Angeles in 1984. Option D is wrong because high diving, from platforms far higher than the Olympic ten metres, is a World Aquatics discipline contested at the World Championships although not at the Olympics. Canoeing, kayaking and sailing are likewise outside aquatics.

The correct answer is B, Bangladesh. Kabaddi, known there as ha-du-du, was declared the national game of Bangladesh after the country's independence, and it is the single most asked fact about the sport in competitive papers. India, despite dominating the game and giving it the Pro Kabaddi League, has no officially declared national game at all, a point examiners also like to test. A is wrong because the national sport of Nepal is volleyball, which replaced dandi biyo. C is wrong because volleyball is also the national sport of Sri Lanka, although cricket is by far the more popular game there. D is wrong because the national sport of Bhutan is archery, which is reflected in its village festivals and in its Olympic entries. Keeping these four South Asian national sports together makes a reliable one-mark answer.

The correct answer is B, two. Olympic weightlifting consists of the snatch and the clean and jerk, and a competitor is allowed three attempts at each; the best valid lift in each is added to give the total that decides the medal. A is wrong because a single lift would not test both the explosive pull of the snatch and the two-stage strength of the clean and jerk, and no international competition has ever been held on one lift. C is wrong, though it was once right: a third lift, the clean and press, was part of the programme until it was dropped after the Munich Games of 1972 because judging how strictly the press was performed proved too subjective. D is wrong because four lifts describes no form of the sport; candidates who choose it are usually thinking of the three lifts of powerlifting with one added. Remember that powerlifting has three lifts and weightlifting two.

The correct answer is D, Karnataka. Karnataka won the 2017-18 Vijay Hazare Trophy, beating Saurashtra in the final played in Delhi. The tournament is India's premier domestic limited-overs competition for state teams, run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India since 2002-03, and it is named after Vijay Hazare, the batsman who led India to its first Test victory, against England at Madras in 1952. Karnataka's Mayank Agarwal was the story of that season, scoring 723 runs, the highest total by any batsman in a single edition of the trophy. Option A is wrong because Uttar Pradesh did not reach the 2017-18 final. Option B is wrong because Kerala was knocked out before the final that season. Option C is wrong because Maharashtra also failed to reach the final; Karnataka's opponent was Saurashtra. Exam tip: Vijay Hazare Trophy is the one-day tournament, the Ranji Trophy the first-class one and the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy the Twenty20 one.

The correct answer is B, Karnam Malleswari. She won the bronze medal in the sixty-nine kilogram class in weightlifting at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the first Olympic medal by an Indian woman in any sport. Option A is wrong, although P. T. Usha came closest before her: at Los Angeles in 1984 she finished fourth in the four hundred metres hurdles, losing the bronze by one hundredth of a second. Option C is wrong because Mary Kom's Olympic bronze in boxing came at London in 2012, twelve years after Malleswari. Option D is wrong because Mirabai Chanu won her weightlifting silver at Tokyo in 2020; she is India's second woman weightlifting medallist, not the first. The pairing to remember is weightlifting with Sydney 2000 for the first, and weightlifting with Tokyo 2020 for the next.

The correct answer is B, Spirit in Motion. The motto was adopted along with the emblem of three Agitos, the red, blue and green curved shapes that sweep around a central point; agito is Latin for I move, and together the symbol and the motto stand for movement and for athletes converging from every direction. Option A is wrong because faster, higher, stronger is the Olympic motto, translated from the Latin citius, altius, fortius, and belongs to the other movement. Option C is wrong because sport for all is a general slogan of sports promotion used by many bodies and is not the Paralympic motto. Option D is wrong because inspire a generation was the slogan of one particular edition of the Games held in London and not the standing motto of the movement.

The correct answer is B, swimming. Murlikant Petkar won the 50 metre freestyle at the 1972 Heidelberg Paralympic Games, and that remained India's only Paralympic gold for thirty-two years. Petkar, a former soldier disabled by bullet wounds in the 1965 war, also set a world record in the event. Option A is wrong but is the natural guess, because athletics has since given India several Paralympic golds, beginning with Devendra Jhajharia in the javelin at Athens in 2004; those came later. Option C is wrong because shooting brought India its first Paralympic shooting gold much later, at Tokyo in 2021. Option D is wrong because badminton entered the Paralympic programme only at the Tokyo Games. The question is often set beside its Olympic counterpart, where India's first individual gold came in shooting, through Abhinav Bindra at Beijing in 2008.

The correct answer is B, Arun Jaitley Stadium. The ground of the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association was renamed in 2019 in memory of the former union minister who had led that association for many years; the playing area alone was renamed, and the older name Feroz Shah Kotla still attaches to the historic complex beside it. Option A is wrong because the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium, named after the hockey player called the Wizard, is the capital's best-known hockey ground. Option C is wrong because the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium is the large multi-sport venue that hosted the 1982 Asian Games and the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Option D is wrong because the Indira Gandhi Arena is an indoor stadium used for gymnastics, wrestling and cycling events. Renamings are a favourite of paper setters, so carry the pairs: Kotla and Arun Jaitley, Motera and Narendra Modi.

The correct answer is B, Sydney 2000. Karnam Malleswari took bronze there and became the first Indian woman ever to win an Olympic medal, a feat that earned her the popular title Iron Lady of India. The Sydney Games are easy to remember in this connection because they were also the first Olympics at which women's weightlifting was held at all, so her medal came in the event's opening appearance. A is wrong because no Indian woman won a medal at Atlanta in 1996, where India's single medal came from tennis. C is wrong because Athens in 2004 brought India one medal, a silver in shooting. D is wrong because Beijing in 2008 is remembered for India's first individual Olympic gold, in shooting, along with two bronze medals in wrestling and boxing, none of them in weightlifting.

The correct answer is C, 122 cm. The full target face used at 70 metres measures 122 centimetres across and carries ten concentric scoring rings, the innermost worth 10 points and the outermost worth 1. The two innermost gold rings together are called the gold, and the small circle at the centre is the X ring, used to separate archers on equal scores.

Option A is wrong because the 80 centimetre face is the compound face used at 50 metres. Option B is wrong because 100 centimetres is not a standard target size in target archery at all. Option D is wrong because no World Archery round uses a 140 centimetre face; the largest standard face is the 122 centimetre one. An easy way to hold this is that the bigger face goes with the longer distance, so 122 centimetres pairs with 70 metres.

The correct answer is B, Bachendri Pal, who reached the summit on 23 May 1984 with an Indian expedition and was honoured with the Padma Shri and later the Padma Bhushan. Option A is wrong because Santosh Yadav came later and is remembered for climbing Everest twice, in 1992 and 1993, the first woman in the world to do so. Option C is wrong because Premlata Agarwal, who climbed in 2011, is known as the oldest Indian woman to summit Everest at the time of her climb. Option D is wrong because Arunima Sinha, who climbed in 2013, is celebrated as the first woman amputee to summit Everest. All four names belong to the same story, so attach each to its own first: Pal the first Indian woman, Yadav the first twice, Agarwal the oldest and Sinha the first amputee.

The correct answer is A, Purma Banerjee. India marched behind its own flag at the Olympics for the first time at Antwerp in 1920, and the athlete Purma Banerjee carried it at the opening ceremony. That was India's first real team at the Games: six members, four athletes and two wrestlers, sent with the help of the industrialist Dorabji Tata, whose support also led to the founding of the Indian Olympic Association in 1927. Earlier, at Paris in 1900, India had been represented by Norman Pritchard competing alone. B is wrong because Dhyan Chand was the hockey great whose teams took gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936, but he was not the first flag bearer. C is wrong because Lal Shah Bokhari carried the flag later, at Los Angeles in 1932. D is wrong because the hockey player Zafar Iqbal was flag bearer at Los Angeles in 1984. Exam tip: 1920 Antwerp — India's first Olympic team, flag carried by Purma Banerjee.

The correct answer is C, the bench press. Powerlifting is made up of three lifts, the squat, the bench press and the deadlift, in none of which the bar finishes overhead, and the sport is not on the Olympic programme; para powerlifting, contested at the Paralympic Games, is the bench press alone. A is wrong because the snatch is one of the two Olympic weightlifting lifts, in which the bar travels from the platform to arms overhead in a single movement. B is wrong because the clean and jerk is the other Olympic lift, performed in two stages with a pause at the shoulders. D is wrong because the jerk is not a separate event at all but the second half of the clean and jerk, the drive that takes the bar from the shoulders to overhead. The clean distinction to memorise is two lifts overhead for weightlifting, three lifts not overhead for powerlifting.

The correct answer is B, K. D. Jadhav. Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav won a bronze medal in wrestling at the Helsinki Games of 1952, the first individual Olympic medal won by an Indian after independence, at a time when India's Olympic reputation rested entirely on the hockey team.

Option A, Leander Paes, won a bronze in men's singles tennis at Atlanta in 1996, ending a long gap after Jadhav but not preceding him. Option C, Karnam Malleswari, won a bronze in weightlifting at Sydney in 2000 and is remembered as the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal. Option D, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, won a silver in double trap shooting at Athens in 2004, India's first individual silver. All four are genuine individual medallists, so the examinable word is first, and the answer is the earliest of them.

The correct answer is C, 400 metres hurdles. P. T. Usha finished fourth in that final at Los Angeles in 1984, behind the bronze medallist by one hundredth of a second, the narrowest miss by any Indian athlete at the Olympic Games. Option A is wrong because she was a sprinter over two hundred metres early in her career but her Olympic near miss was not in that event. Option B is wrong because the flat four hundred metres is the event in which Kamaljit Sandhu had won the Asian Games gold in 1970, and it is a common swap in question papers. Option D is wrong because the long jump belongs to Anju Bobby George, who won India's first world championship medal in athletics in 2003. Keep the detail that makes the question: hurdles, 1984, fourth place by a hundredth of a second.

The correct answer is B, the pommel horse. The men's programme has six apparatus, the floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar, and of these the pommel horse, the rings, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar appear in no women's event. A is wrong because the vault is one of the two apparatus common to men and women, the other being the floor exercise, which is why men compete on six and women on four. C is wrong because the balance beam is a women's apparatus, a padded beam ten centimetres wide on which steadiness is prized. D is wrong because the uneven bars, two horizontal bars set at different heights, also belong only to the women's programme; candidates confuse them with the men's parallel bars, which are at the same height and set side by side. Learn the two common apparatus first and the rest follows.

The correct answer is A, long jump in 2003. Anju Bobby George won the bronze in the long jump at the World Athletics Championships in Paris in 2003, the first medal won by any Indian, man or woman, at those championships. Option B is wrong because she competed in the long jump, not the triple jump, although she began in the triple jump early in her career. Option C is wrong because the year is 2003; in 2005 she won the World Athletics Final, which is a different competition and often used as a distractor. Option D is wrong on both counts, since the event was the long jump and no Indian won a medal at the 2001 championships. Pair this with the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games medals she also won, and remember that her husband Robert Bobby George was her coach.

The correct answer is C, Nadia Comaneci of Romania, who received the first perfect ten in Olympic gymnastics at the Montreal Games of 1976, at the age of fourteen; the scoreboard of the day could show only three digits and displayed her mark as 1.00. A is wrong because Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union, who competed in the 1950s and 1960s, is remembered for a different record, the most Olympic medals won by any gymnast, eighteen in all. B is wrong because Olga Korbut, also of the Soviet Union, was the star of the Munich Games of 1972 and made the sport popular on television, but she was not awarded a ten at the Olympics. D is wrong because Simone Biles competed long after the ten-point system was abolished in 2006 in favour of open-ended scoring that adds a difficulty mark to an execution mark, so a perfect ten could not be given to her.