Sports GK Mixed Quiz: Set 34

The correct answer is B, Kinshasa. The fight took place in October 1974 at Kinshasa, then the capital of Zaire and today the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is how the bout came to be called the Rumble in the Jungle. Ali, the underdog, leaned on the ropes to absorb Foreman's punches, a tactic known as the rope-a-dope, and knocked him out in the eighth round to regain the world heavyweight title. Option A, Manila, is the trap: Ali's other legendary fight, the Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier, was held there in 1975, and candidates routinely swap the two. Option C, Lagos in Nigeria, and option D, Nairobi in Kenya, are African capitals offered only to confuse. Learn the pair together: Kinshasa 1974 against Foreman, Manila 1975 against Frazier.

The correct answer is B, Pele. The Brazilian forward, whose full name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, was part of the Brazil squads that won the World Cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970, and no other player has three winners' medals. Option A, Diego Maradona, led Argentina to the title in 1986 and to the final in 1990, but he won the trophy only once. Option C, Franz Beckenbauer of Germany, won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and later as manager in 1990, which makes him a different kind of double but not a three-time winning player. Option D, Johan Cruyff of the Netherlands, is counted among the finest footballers ever and won three European Cups with Ajax, yet he never won a World Cup; his Netherlands side lost the 1974 final. Pele was also called the Black Pearl and spent almost his whole club career with Santos.

The correct answer is A, Hyderabad. The Afro-Asian Games were conceived as a meeting of the champions of Africa and Asia, and the first edition was held at Hyderabad in 2003, with the main events at the Gachibowli stadium complex built for the purpose. Later editions were announced but never took place, so Hyderabad remains the only host in the history of the event, and that is the fact the question is built on. Option C, New Delhi, has hosted the Asian Games of 1951 and 1982 and the Commonwealth Games of 2010, which makes it the most tempting wrong answer. Option B, Bengaluru, and option D, Guwahati, have hosted national-level competition and, in Guwahati's case, the South Asian Games of 2016, but neither has staged the Afro-Asian Games. Keep India's hosting record in one list: Asian Games 1951 and 1982, Afro-Asian Games 2003, Commonwealth Youth Games 2008, Commonwealth Games 2010 and South Asian Games 1987, 1995 and 2016.

The correct answer is B, Singapore. The Youth Olympic Games were proposed by Jacques Rogge, then President of the International Olympic Committee, approved in 2007, and the first Summer edition was staged at Singapore in 2010 for athletes aged fifteen to eighteen. The event also carried a culture and education programme alongside the competitions, which remains a defining feature. Option A, Nanjing in China, hosted the second Summer edition in 2014, and is the distractor most often chosen. Option C, Buenos Aires, hosted the third Summer edition in 2018, which was the first Olympic event of any kind held in South America. Option D, Innsbruck in Austria, is the odd one out because it hosted the first Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2012, not a Summer edition. Fix the sequence in memory as Singapore 2010, Nanjing 2014 and Buenos Aires 2018 for summer, with Innsbruck 2012 beginning the winter series.

The correct answer is B, 2008. The Board of Control for Cricket in India announced the Twenty20 league in 2007 and the first season was played in 2008, with Lalit Modi as the first chairman and commissioner. Option A is wrong, though it is the most tempting choice: 2007 is the year the league was founded and announced, and also the year India won the first ICC World Twenty20, but no IPL match was played in it. Option C is wrong because 2010 was the third season, held in India after the second season had been shifted to South Africa in 2009 because of the general election. Option D is wrong because 2012 was the fifth season, won by Kolkata Knight Riders. Read the stem carefully: a question about the founding year and a question about the first season played have different answers.

The correct answer is A, Milkha Singh. The sprinter won gold in the four hundred metres at the Asian Games and at the Commonwealth Games and finished fourth in the Olympic final at Rome in 1960, and the name was given to him in Pakistan after he beat the local champion there. Option B is wrong because Fauja Singh was the marathon runner famous for competing at a very advanced age, known as the Turbaned Tornado, a different nickname of the same kind. Option C is wrong because Bishan Singh Bedi was a left-arm spinner and captain of the Indian cricket team. Option D is wrong because Balbir Singh Senior was the hockey centre forward who won three Olympic golds, and the trap in this question is to pick any well-known Sikh sportsperson instead of the sprinter.

The correct answer is B, Montreal, Canada. WADA began work in 1999 from Lausanne and then moved its headquarters to Montreal, where the agency has remained; Lausanne continues as its European office. Option A is wrong, and it is the trap in this question, because Lausanne is the seat of the International Olympic Committee and of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, so candidates place every sports body there. Option C is wrong because Paris is the headquarters of UNESCO, which adopted the International Convention against Doping in Sport in 2005, and of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education, not of WADA. Option D is wrong because New York holds the United Nations headquarters and a branch office of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but no office of WADA of that standing. Remembering the pair Montreal for WADA and Lausanne for the Olympic bodies settles a whole family of questions.

The correct answer is C, the 19th Games in 2010. Delhi hosted the nineteenth Commonwealth Games in 2010, the first and so far the only time India has held them. Shera the tiger was the mascot, the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium held the ceremonies and the athletics, and India finished second in the medal table with 101 medals, including 38 gold. Option A is wrong because the seventeenth Games in 2002 were held at Manchester in England. Option B is wrong because the eighteenth Games in 2006 were held at Melbourne in Australia, where India finished fourth. Option D is wrong because the twentieth Games in 2014 were held at Glasgow in Scotland. Linking the edition number to the year is the safest way to answer: Manchester 2002, Melbourne 2006, Delhi 2010 and Glasgow 2014 run in a simple four year chain.

The correct answer is B, Michael Schumacher. The German driver won his first two championships with Benetton in 1994 and 1995, moved to Ferrari and won five consecutive titles from 2000 to 2004, giving him seven in all. Option A, Ayrton Senna of Brazil, won three championships, in 1988, 1990 and 1991, and died in a crash at Imola in 1994, the year of Schumacher's first title. Option C, Alain Prost of France, won four championships, in 1985, 1986, 1989 and 1993, and was Senna's great rival. Option D, Niki Lauda of Austria, won three, in 1975, 1977 and 1984, and is remembered for returning to racing weeks after a near fatal crash at the Nurburgring in 1976. The number to remember for Schumacher is seven titles, five of them in an unbroken run with Ferrari.

The correct answer is D, Fuwa. Beijing 2008 was the first Games to use a set of five mascots, called Fuwa, meaning good-luck dolls: Beibei a fish, Jingjing a panda, Huanhuan the Olympic flame, Yingying a Tibetan antelope and Nini a swallow, their first syllables together making a line of welcome. Option A is wrong because Hodori was the single tiger mascot of Seoul 1988. Option B is wrong because Cobi was the single dog mascot of Barcelona 1992. Option C is wrong because Izzy was the mascot of Atlanta 1996, remembered as the first mascot created on a computer rather than drawn from an animal. Sydney 2000 is the other Games with more than one mascot, three in its case, so keep the figure five for Beijing and three for Sydney when a paper asks for a count.

The correct answer is B, CISM, the International Military Sports Council, which takes its initials from its French name and was founded in 1948. CISM holds championships in many sports through the year and gathers them every four years into the Military World Games, whose first edition was held at Rome in 1995 and which carry the motto of friendship through sport. Option A, NATO, is a military alliance with a defence mandate and no sporting programme of its own, and it includes only part of the membership of CISM. Option C, the International Olympic Committee, runs the Olympic Games and the Youth Olympic Games and recognises other events but does not organise this one. Option D, the United Nations, has no games of its own. Place this event alongside the Invictus Games, begun at London in 2014 for wounded and sick service personnel, since both involve armed forces but are run by entirely different organisations.

The correct answer is C, eight. India won the hockey gold at six consecutive Games, from Amsterdam in 1928 through Los Angeles, Berlin, London and Helsinki to Melbourne in 1956, and then again at Tokyo in 1964 and Moscow in 1980, which gives eight golds in all. A is wrong because six is the number of consecutive golds, not the total, and that distinction is the usual trap in this question. B is wrong because no Indian hockey tally reaches seven as either figure. D is wrong because nine overstates the record; India has won no hockey gold since 1980, although the team took bronze at Tokyo in 2020 and again at Paris in 2024. Including the silver of 1960 and four bronze medals, hockey has brought India thirteen Olympic medals in all.

The correct answer is C, Rajasthan Royals. Rajasthan Royals, led by the Australian leg spinner Shane Warne, won the 2008 final against Chennai Super Kings at the Dr D. Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, and they remain the only team to win the title in the league's first attempt with the smallest purse of that season. Option A is wrong because Chennai Super Kings were the beaten finalists in 2008 and won their first title in 2010. Option B is wrong because Mumbai Indians did not reach the 2008 final and took their first title in 2013. Option D is wrong because Deccan Chargers finished last in 2008 and then won the second season in 2009 in South Africa, a reversal examiners enjoy turning into a question. Remember the pair: Rajasthan Royals in 2008, Deccan Chargers in 2009.

The correct answer is C, Annapurna I. Annapurna I, 8,091 metres high and the lowest of the fourteen eight-thousanders, was climbed in 1950 by a French expedition led by Maurice Herzog, three years before Everest; it remains one of the most dangerous of the fourteen. Option A is wrong because Everest, though the highest, was first climbed in 1953. Option B is wrong because K2 was first climbed in 1954 by an Italian expedition. Option D is wrong because Nanga Parbat was first climbed in 1953 by Hermann Buhl, who made the final stretch alone and without oxygen. The sequence worth remembering is Annapurna in 1950, Everest and Nanga Parbat in 1953, K2 in 1954 and Kangchenjunga in 1955. Annapurna I is also the most dangerous of the fourteen peaks relative to the number of ascents, which is why the 1950 climb is remembered as a landmark in mountaineering.

The correct answer is C, 1999. WADA was created on 10 November 1999, a year after the Festina affair of the 1998 Tour de France, in which a team car carrying banned drugs exposed how organised doping had become and pushed the Olympic movement and governments to build a joint agency. Option A is wrong because 1984 is the year the Court of Arbitration for Sport was established on the initiative of the International Olympic Committee. Option B is wrong because 1994 is the year of the Paris Agreement, by which the International Council of Arbitration for Sport was created to run that court independently. Option D is wrong because 2004 is the year the World Anti-Doping Code came into force, on 1 January, five years after the agency itself. Holding the sequence 1984 for the court, 1994 for its council, 1999 for WADA and 2004 for the Code answers four questions at once.

The correct answer is B, Argentina, which declared pato its national sport in 1953; the game is played by riders who must carry a handled ball and throw it through a vertical ring. Option A is wrong because Brazil has declared no such national sport, football being simply the game of the country by popular usage and capoeira its best known traditional art. Option C is wrong because Mexico's official national sport is charreria, the contest of horsemanship ridden by charros, which is itself a frequently asked answer and sits next to pato because both are mounted. Option D is wrong because Chile's official national sport is Chilean rodeo, in which two riders work a steer along a padded wall. Learning these three South American answers together, pato for Argentina, charreria for Mexico and rodeo for Chile, settles a whole group of questions.

The correct answer is B, Helsinki, 1952. The Czechoslovak runner won all three distance events at those Games, and the marathon was the first he had ever run; no athlete has repeated the treble. Option A, London in 1948, was the Games where Zatopek won the 10,000 metres and took silver in the 5,000 metres, which is why it looks tempting, but the treble came four years later. Option C, Melbourne in 1956, was his last Olympics, where he finished sixth in the marathon. Option D, Rome in 1960, is the Games of Abebe Bikila's barefoot marathon victory and of Milkha Singh's fourth place in the 400 metres. Zatopek was nicknamed the Czech Locomotive for his heavy, laboured running style, and his Helsinki treble is the standard objective question about him.

The correct answer is A, Paris, where the event began in 1924 as the International Silent Games and later took the name Deaflympics. It is conducted by the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf and is older than both the Paralympics and the Special Olympics; starters use lights and flags instead of a whistle or a gun, and referees signal with hand flags. Option B, Rome, hosted the first Paralympic Games in 1960, held alongside the Olympic Games of that year. Option C, Chicago, hosted the first Special Olympics World Games in 1968, the event founded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver for athletes with intellectual disability. Option D, London, hosted the first Invictus Games in 2014. The three events for athletes with disability are run by three different bodies and must be kept apart: Deaflympics for deaf athletes, Special Olympics for intellectual disability, and Paralympics for physical and visual impairment.

The correct answer is C, 2014. The Pro Kabaddi League began in 2014, organised by Mashal Sports along with the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India, and it was built deliberately on the franchise model of the IPL, with city teams, a player auction and a television contract. Option A is wrong because 2008 is the year of the first IPL season, not of the kabaddi league. Option B is wrong because 2013 is the year the Hockey India League and the Indian Badminton League began, so it is the natural trap in this question. Option D is wrong because 2017 is the year Ultimate Table Tennis started. The first Pro Kabaddi season was won by Jaipur Pink Panthers, and the league is credited with turning an indigenous rural sport into a television property that reached a mass audience.

The correct answer is B, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. NADA was set up on 24 November 2005 as a registered society under that ministry, and it plans and carries out sample collection, manages results and runs education programmes so that sport in India is practised without doping. The National Anti-Doping Act, 2022 later gave the agency a footing in law and created a National Board for Anti-Doping in Sports to oversee it. Option A is wrong because the health ministry deals with drug regulation and public health, not with sport testing, although doping involves medicines. Option C is wrong because the home ministry has no role of this kind; narcotics control is a separate subject from sports doping. Option D is wrong because the education ministry handles school and higher education, while sport, including the Sports Authority of India and Khelo India, sits with the youth affairs and sports ministry.