Indian Sporting Firsts and Legends: Complete GK Notes

The correct answer is A, Norman Pritchard. Pritchard was the only competitor representing India at the Paris Games of 1900 and he finished second in both the 200 metres sprint and the 200 metres hurdles, so India's first two Olympic medals were silver and came in athletics. Option B, K. D. Jadhav, won a wrestling bronze at Helsinki in 1952, which was the first individual Olympic medal for independent India but not India's first medal. Option C, Dhyan Chand, was part of the hockey teams that won gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936, so his first medal came twenty-eight years after Pritchard's. Option D, Milkha Singh, never won an Olympic medal; he finished fourth in the 400 metres at Rome in 1960. Candidates must keep the three dates apart: 1900 for the first medals, 1928 for the first gold and 1952 for the first individual medal after independence.

The correct answer is B, Amsterdam 1928. India sent a hockey team to the Olympic Games for the first time in 1928 and won the gold medal without conceding a single goal in the tournament, beginning a run of six successive hockey golds that ran through 1932, 1936, 1948, 1952 and 1956. Option A, Antwerp 1920, is the Games at which India first sent a team of athletes, but hockey was not part of that programme for India and no medal was won. Option C, Los Angeles 1932, and option D, Berlin 1936, were the second and third hockey golds, and 1936 is especially famous because Dhyan Chand captained the side. The examiner's trap is to offer 1920, the year of India's first team, in place of 1928, the year of India's first gold.

The correct answer is C, Abhinav Bindra. Bindra won the men's 10 metre air rifle shooting event at Beijing in 2008, and it remains India's first individual Olympic gold medal; he had already become a world champion in the same event in 2006. Option A, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, won silver in double trap shooting at Athens in 2004, which was India's first individual Olympic silver, and he is the standard distractor because his medal also came in shooting. Option B, Sushil Kumar, won a wrestling bronze in 2008 and a silver in 2012, making him the first Indian with individual medals at two Games, but neither was gold. Option D, Neeraj Chopra, won gold in the javelin throw at Tokyo in 2020, India's first Olympic medal of any colour in athletics, but that came thirteen years after Bindra.

The correct answer is B, weightlifting. Malleswari won a bronze medal in the 69 kilogram weight class at Sydney in 2000 and so became the first Indian woman to win any Olympic medal, which is why she is remembered as the Iron Lady of Indian sport. Option A, athletics, is wrong: P. T. Usha came closest for an Indian woman in athletics when she missed a bronze at Los Angeles in 1984 by a hundredth of a second, and the first Indian woman to win an Olympic athletics medal did not precede Malleswari. Option C, shooting, gave India its first individual gold through Abhinav Bindra, a man, in 2008. Option D, badminton, produced Saina Nehwal's bronze in 2012 and P. V. Sindhu's silver in 2016, both after Malleswari. Remember the year 2000 with weightlifting and Sydney.

The correct answer is B, hockey. Dhyan Chand played in the Indian hockey teams that won Olympic gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936, captaining the side in Berlin, and his control of the ball earned him the title of the wizard or the magician of hockey. His birthday, 29 August, is observed every year as National Sports Day, the occasion on which the national sports awards are conferred, and the highest of those awards now carries his name as the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. Option A, football, belongs to names such as Syed Abdul Rahim and Chuni Goswami. Option C, wrestling, is the sport of K. D. Jadhav and Sushil Kumar. Option D, cricket, has no connection with him. The chain to remember is Dhyan Chand, hockey, 29 August and National Sports Day.

The correct answer is B, Prakash Padukone. Padukone won the All England Open in 1980, the oldest and at that time the most prestigious badminton tournament in the world, and he was also the first Indian to be ranked world number one in the men's game. Option A, Pullela Gopichand, won the same title in 2001 and so became only the second Indian to do it, which makes him the commonest wrong answer here; he later coached Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu. Option C, Nandu Natekar, was the pioneering Indian player of the nineteen fifties and the first Indian to win an international badminton title, but not the All England. Option D, Syed Modi, was a national champion of the nineteen eighties. Fix the order in memory: Natekar as the pioneer, Padukone in 1980 and Gopichand in 2001.

The correct answer is C, Viswanathan Anand. Anand earned the Grandmaster title in 1988, the first Indian to do so, went on to become the world champion in 2000 and held the undisputed title from 2007 to 2013. He was also the first recipient of the country's highest sporting honour, instituted in 1991-92 and now called the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. Option A, Pravin Thipsay, and option B, Dibyendu Barua, were strong Indian players of the same generation and became Grandmasters after Anand, which is exactly why they appear as distractors. Option D, Koneru Humpy, is one of India's finest women players and a Grandmaster, but she belongs to a later generation. The line worth memorising is Anand in 1988 for the first Grandmaster title and in 2000 for the world championship.

The correct answer is B, Kapil Dev. India beat the West Indies in the final at Lord's in 1983 with Kapil Dev as captain, and the tournament is also remembered for his unbeaten 175 against Zimbabwe at Tunbridge Wells earlier in the competition. Option A, Sunil Gavaskar, captained India in other periods and was the first batsman in the world to score ten thousand Test runs, but he was not captain in the 1983 final. Option C, Ajit Wadekar, led the side to its celebrated series victories in the West Indies and England in 1971, which is a different landmark. Option D, Mohinder Amarnath, was the player of the match in both the semi-final and the final of 1983 but never captained India. Keep the three World Cup wins in order: 1983 under Kapil Dev, the 2007 World Twenty20 and the 2011 World Cup under M. S. Dhoni.

The correct answer is B, the Dronacharya Award. Instituted in 1985 and named after the teacher of archery in the Mahabharata, it is conferred on coaches who have produced medal winners in international competition. Option A, the Arjuna Award, instituted in 1961, goes to players for consistently outstanding performance over several years, not to their coaches. Option C, the Dhyan Chand Award, instituted in 2002, is a lifetime achievement honour for retired sportspersons who continue to contribute to sport. Option D, the Khel Ratna Award, instituted in 1991-92 and now named after Major Dhyan Chand, is the highest sporting honour of the country and its first recipient was Viswanathan Anand. All four are announced on National Sports Day, 29 August, so candidates must separate them by their purpose rather than their date.

The correct answer is B, P. T. Usha. Usha comes from Payyoli in Kozhikode district of Kerala, and the speed with which she ran the sprints and the 400 metres hurdles earned her the name Payyoli Express; she is also called the Golden Girl of Indian athletics for her long run of Asian Games and Asian Championships titles. Her best remembered race is the 400 metres hurdles final at Los Angeles in 1984, in which she finished fourth, one hundredth of a second away from the bronze. Option A, Anju Bobby George, won India's first medal at a World Athletics Championships, a long jump bronze at Paris in 2003. Option C, Shiny Wilson, was a fine middle distance runner of the same era. Option D, Hima Das, is a later sprinter known for a world junior title. Nicknames are a favourite one-mark question, so learn them as pairs.

The correct answer is B, Devendra Jhajharia. Jhajharia won the javelin throw gold at Athens in 2004 and again at Rio in 2016, becoming the first Indian Paralympian with two gold medals. Option A, Murlikant Petkar, is a strong distractor because he won India's very first Paralympic gold, in swimming at Heidelberg in 1972, but that was a single title. Option C, Deepa Malik, became the first Indian woman to win a Paralympic medal when she took silver in the shot put at Rio in 2016, a first of a different kind. Option D, Avani Lekhara, became the first Indian woman to win a Paralympic gold, in shooting at the Tokyo Games. The four firsts should be stored separately: Petkar for the first gold, Jhajharia for two golds, Malik for the first medal by a woman and Lekhara for the first gold by a woman.