Legends of World Sport and Their Records for Exams

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 B, Berlin. At the World Athletics Championships held in Berlin in August 2009, Usain Bolt of Jamaica lowered his own world records to 9.58 seconds over 100 metres and 19.19 seconds over 200 metres, the two fastest times ever recorded. Option A, Beijing, is the obvious trap, because Bolt first stunned the world there at the 2008 Olympic Games, where he won both sprints and the relay, but those marks were slower than the Berlin times. Option C, London, hosted the 2012 Olympics, where Bolt retained his titles, and the 2017 World Championships, which were his last. Option D, Osaka, hosted the 2007 World Championships, a year before Bolt's rise, when Tyson Gay won the sprints. Bolt, nicknamed the Lightning Bolt, retired in 2017 with eight Olympic gold medals.

The correct answer is B, Michael Phelps. The American swimmer competed at five Olympic Games and finished with 28 medals, of which 23 are gold, far ahead of anyone else in any sport. His eight golds at Beijing in 2008 are also the most won at a single Games. Option A, Carl Lewis, won nine Olympic golds in athletics, four of them in the long jump at four successive Games, a great haul but not the record. Option C, Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union, held the overall record of eighteen Olympic medals in gymnastics from 1964 until Phelps passed it in 2012, and she remains the most decorated gymnast. Option D, Mark Spitz, won seven golds at Munich in 1972, the single-Games record that Phelps broke in Beijing. Phelps retired after the Rio Games of 2016.

The correct answer is A, Cassius Clay. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville in the United States, he won the light heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics, took the world heavyweight title from Sonny Liston in 1964 and changed his name to Muhammad Ali soon afterwards. He became world heavyweight champion three times, and his most famous fights are the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman at Kinshasa in 1974 and the Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier in 1975. Option B, Joe Frazier, was his great rival and a separate boxer who beat Ali in their first meeting in 1971. Option C, Sonny Liston, was the champion Ali defeated to win his first title. Option D, Sugar Ray Robinson, was an earlier American boxer often called the finest pound for pound fighter of all time. Ali was known as The Greatest.

The correct answer is C, 99.94. Bradman played 52 Test matches between 1928 and 1948 and scored 6,996 runs with 29 centuries, leaving him with an average of 99.94, a figure no batter has approached since. Famously, he needed only four runs in his final Test innings at The Oval in 1948 to finish with an average of exactly 100, and he was dismissed for nought. Options A, B and D are numbers close enough to look plausible, which is exactly how this question is set; 99.94 must be memorised as a figure, not reasoned out. Bradman was nicknamed The Don, and he is also remembered for the Bodyline series of 1932 and 1933, when England bowled fast and short at the leg side specifically to contain him. The Bradman average is one of the handful of cricket numbers that appear in every exam family.

The correct answer is C, Montreal, 1976. At the Montreal Olympics, the fourteen-year-old Nadia Comaneci was awarded a perfect score of 10 on the uneven bars, the first such mark in Olympic gymnastics; the scoreboards of the day could not display it and showed 1.00 instead. She went on to win three golds at those Games. Option A, Mexico City in 1968, is remembered for the high altitude and for Bob Beamon's long jump. Option B, Munich in 1972, is remembered for Mark Spitz's seven swimming golds and for the attack on the Israeli team. Option D, Moscow in 1980, was the Games boycotted by the United States and several other countries; Comaneci competed there too and won two more golds, but the perfect 10 belongs to 1976. Attach her name firmly to Montreal.

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, 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 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 B, Jahangir Khan. He won the British Open ten times in a row and went unbeaten in competitive play for over five years from 1981, a run of hundreds of consecutive match wins that is often called the longest winning streak in any professional sport. Option A, Jansher Khan, also of Pakistan, was the dominant player of the following decade and won the World Open eight times and the British Open six times, so the two are constantly interchanged. Option C, Hashim Khan, was the pioneer of the family dynasty and won the British Open seven times in the 1950s, when the tournament was treated as the world championship. Option D, Qamar Zaman, was another leading Pakistani player of the 1970s who won the British Open once. The unbeaten streak is the detail that fixes the answer on Jahangir.