Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 20

The correct answer is A, the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, usually shortened to FIG. Founded in 1881, it is the oldest international sports federation in the world, older than the modern Olympic movement itself, and it has its headquarters at Lausanne in Switzerland. It governs artistic, rhythmic, trampoline, acrobatic and aerobic gymnastics and sets the code of points by which routines are scored. B is wrong because no body called the International Gymnastics Council exists; the name is invented to sound plausible. C is wrong for the same reason, and the mention of a single discipline is a clue, since the real federation covers them all. D is wrong because the International Weightlifting Federation, founded in 1905, governs weightlifting; it is the correct answer to the companion question and is offered here to catch a candidate who reads the two sports as 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 C, Sakshi Malik, who won the bronze in the fifty-eight kilogram freestyle category at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, coming back from behind in the last seconds of her bout. Option A is wrong, although Geeta Phogat holds two other firsts: she was the first Indian woman wrestler to win a Commonwealth Games gold, at Delhi in 2010, and the first to qualify for the Olympic Games, in 2012. Option B is wrong because Vinesh Phogat is a Commonwealth and Asian Games gold medallist and a world championship medallist, but the Olympic first belongs to Sakshi Malik. Option D is wrong because Babita Kumari is a Commonwealth Games gold medallist without an Olympic medal. The safe rule is that for wrestling the Olympic first is Malik and the Commonwealth first is Geeta Phogat.

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 B, the Produnova, a front handspring followed by two front somersaults, named after the Russian gymnast Yelena Produnova who first performed it and nicknamed the vault of death for the risk it carries. Dipa Karmakar performed it at the Rio Games of 2016, where she became the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for the Olympics and finished fourth in the vault final. A is wrong because the Yurchenko, named after Natalia Yurchenko, is the family of vaults that begins with a round-off on to the springboard and is the base of most modern vaults, not Karmakar's signature. C is wrong because the Tsukahara, named after Mitsuo Tsukahara, is a different vault family using a half turn on to the table. D is wrong because the Amanar, named after Simona Amanar, is a Yurchenko entry with two and a half twists and is associated with other gymnasts.

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, Mary Kom. She won the world amateur championship in 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2018, six titles in all, which earned her the name Magnificent Mary, and she added an Olympic bronze in the fifty-one kilogram class at London in 2012. Option A is wrong because Lovlina Borgohain is a world championship bronze medallist and the winner of an Olympic bronze at Tokyo in 2020, not a six-time world champion. Option C is wrong because Nikhat Zareen is a world champion but with a smaller number of titles. Option D is wrong because L. Sarita Devi won the world title in 2006 and several Asian titles, but one world championship, not six. The number six with the name Mary Kom is the fact the paper wants.

The correct answer is B, Murlikant Petkar. An army man wounded by bullets in the war of 1965, he took to swimming during his recovery and won the fifty metre freestyle event at the Heidelberg Games of 1972 in a world record time, giving India its first Paralympic gold medal, which remained the country’s only one for decades. Option A is wrong because Devendra Jhajharia won his first gold at Athens in 2004, thirty-two years later, and his distinction is being the first Indian with two Paralympic golds. Option C is wrong because Mariyappan Thangavelu won the high jump at Rio in 2016. Option D is wrong because Sumit Antil won the javelin at the Tokyo Games with a world record, which is a recent achievement. Remember Petkar with swimming and 1972.

The correct answer is B, women's artistic gymnastics. The beam is a padded bar about five metres long and only ten centimetres wide, raised roughly a metre and a quarter above the floor, and it is one of the four women's apparatus along with the vault, the uneven bars and the floor exercise. A is wrong because the men's six apparatus are the floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar, and the beam appears in none of them. C is wrong because rhythmic gymnastics is performed on a floor area with hand apparatus, namely the rope, hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon, and uses no fixed equipment of this kind. D is wrong because trampoline gymnastics, added to the Olympic programme at Sydney in 2000, is contested on a trampoline bed alone. The pair to remember is beam and uneven bars for women, pommel horse and rings for men.

The correct answer is A, Lona. When a team succeeds in putting all seven players of the opposing side out, the whole opposing team is revived and the scoring team is awarded two extra points; this achievement is called a lona, sometimes spelt lona or lobh in older rule books. B is wrong because a super raid is a single raid in which the raider collects three or more points, which is impressive but is not the all-out bonus. C is wrong because a bonus point is the single point a raider earns by touching the bonus line with one foot grounded behind it when the required number of defenders is on the mat. D is wrong because a do-or-die raid is the third consecutive raid by a team after two empty raids, in which the raider must score or be declared out; it describes a situation, not a scoring bonus.

The correct answer is B, Saina Nehwal, who won the bronze in the women's singles at the London Olympics in 2012, the first Olympic medal in badminton for India; in 2015 she also became the first Indian woman to reach the world number one ranking in the sport. Option A is wrong because P. V. Sindhu came next, with a silver at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a bronze at Tokyo in 2020, which makes her the first Indian woman with two Olympic medals, a different record. Option C is wrong because Jwala Gutta is a doubles specialist with Commonwealth Games gold and a world championship bronze, but no Olympic medal. Option D is wrong for the same reason in the case of Ashwini Ponnappa. Keep the two badminton firsts apart: Nehwal the first medal, Sindhu the first two medals and the 2019 world title.

The correct answer is B, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle. One swimmer covers all four strokes in that fixed sequence over 200 or 400 metres, and freestyle is always last. Option A is the order of the medley relay, not of the individual medley, and it is the commonest mistake on this question: in a relay the backstroke leg must come first because backstroke is the only stroke started in the water, so the first swimmer can begin from the wall while the others take flying starts. Option C is wrong because freestyle, the fastest stroke, is deliberately placed at the end of both medleys to make the finish the quickest part of the race. Option D is wrong because breaststroke, the slowest stroke, is swum third in the individual medley and second in the relay, never first. Remember the pair of orders together, since papers often ask them in the same set.

The correct answer is A, the ribbon. Rhythmic gymnastics combines dance and gymnastic movement with a hand apparatus, and the five recognised apparatus are the rope, the hoop, the ball, the clubs and the ribbon; a routine is performed on a floor area to music, and the apparatus must be kept in continuous motion. B is wrong because the pommel horse is a fixed apparatus in men's artistic gymnastics, a padded body with two handles on which the gymnast swings his legs. C is wrong because the still rings, two rings hanging from straps, are also a men's artistic apparatus and test upper-body strength and control. D is wrong because the horizontal bar, often called the high bar, is the last of the men's six apparatus. All three wrong options come from the men's artistic list, which is the usual way this question is set, so keep the rhythmic five and the artistic lists separate in memory.

The correct answer is A, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The circuit was built there and held the Formula One Indian Grand Prix in 2011, 2012 and 2013, the only rounds of the world championship ever staged in India; it continues to be used for motorcycle racing and other motor sport events. Option B is wrong because the Madras Motor Race Track at Sriperumbudur near Chennai is an older and much shorter circuit that has never held a Formula One race. Option C is wrong because the Kari Motor Speedway at Coimbatore is a small track used for club racing and karting. Option D is wrong because Gurugram has no international racing circuit. Two further facts travel with this one: Formula One races are run over a set number of laps rather than a fixed time, and the most famous street circuit of the calendar is at Monaco.

The correct answer is B, Arati Saha, who crossed the English Channel in 1959 and became the first Asian woman to do so; in 1960 she also became the first Indian sportswoman to be awarded the Padma Shri. Option A is wrong because Bula Choudhury, also a swimmer from Bengal, swam the Channel later and is known for crossing the seven seas, a separate achievement. Option C is wrong because Mihir Sen was a man, the first Indian to swim the English Channel, in 1958, and the distractor works only if the question is read carelessly. Option D is wrong because Nilima Ghose was an athlete, one of the first two Indian women to compete at the Olympic Games, at Helsinki in 1952, and not a swimmer. Remember the pair of years: Mihir Sen in 1958 and Arati Saha in 1959.

The correct answer is B, 50 metres. The compound bow uses cams and cables that hold most of the draw weight for the archer, a magnifying scope and a mechanical release aid, so scores are far higher than with a recurve. To keep the sport testing, the compound round is shot at 50 metres at the smaller 80 centimetre face, and only the inner rings are used for scoring in some formats.

Option A is wrong because 30 metres belongs to indoor and youth rounds. Option C is wrong because 70 metres is the recurve Olympic distance, the pairing candidates most often confuse. Option D is wrong because 90 metres was part of the discontinued long FITA round for recurve men. Since Indian archers win most of their continental gold in compound events, examiners like asking this distance in current affairs based questions about Asian Games medals.

The correct answer is C, twenty kilograms. The men's competition bar weighs twenty kilograms and the women's fifteen, and the discs loaded on it are colour coded so that the total can be read from a distance: red for twenty-five kilograms, blue for twenty, yellow for fifteen, green for ten and white for five. A is wrong because ten kilograms is the weight of a green disc, not of any competition bar. B is wrong, and is the commonest confusion, because fifteen kilograms is the women's bar; a question that does not specify the sex of the lifter is testing exactly this pair. D is wrong because twenty-five kilograms is the heaviest standard disc, shown in red, and no bar weighs that much. The platform on which the lift is made measures four metres by four, and stepping off it makes the attempt invalid, which is another detail asked in the same breath.

The correct answer is D, Hamilton, in Canada. The first edition was held there in 1930 under the name British Empire Games, organised by Melville Marks Robinson, and it grew out of a proposal made as far back as 1891 by John Astley Cooper for a festival of the nations of the Empire.

Option A, London, hosted the second edition in 1934, the first in which India took part. Option B, Sydney, hosted a later edition and is placed here because Australia is so closely associated with these Games. Option C, Cardiff, hosted the 1958 Games, which matter for two other facts: the Baton Relay began there and Milkha Singh won the 440 yards there. Each of the three wrong options is therefore a real host city, which is why the year must be learnt with the city rather than the city alone.

The correct answer is A, Koneru Humpy, who earned the Grandmaster title in 2002 as a teenager and went on to win the world women's rapid chess championship in 2019. Option B is wrong because S. Vijayalakshmi was a pioneer of Indian women's chess and the first Indian woman to become an International Master, a title one step below Grandmaster. Option C is wrong because Tania Sachdev holds the International Master and Woman Grandmaster titles and is well known as a player and commentator, but she is not the first Grandmaster. Option D is wrong because Harika Dronavalli, a multiple world championship bronze medallist, took the Grandmaster title after Humpy. Note the trap in this chapter: the Woman Grandmaster title is different from the open Grandmaster title, and questions turn on that difference.

The correct answer is B, Kamaljit Sandhu, who won the four hundred metres at the Asian Games in Bangkok in 1970 and became the first Indian woman to win an individual gold at those Games. Option A is wrong because P. T. Usha's Asian Games haul came later, including four golds at Seoul in 1986, by which time the first had already been achieved. Option C is wrong because Shiny Wilson, a fine middle distance runner and relay runner of the same era as Usha, is remembered for Asian championship titles and for carrying the Indian flag at the Olympics. Option D is wrong because Kamalpreet Kaur is a discus thrower of a much later generation. The fact worth storing is the triple of name, event and year: Kamaljit Sandhu, four hundred metres, 1970.