Weightlifting and Gymnastics: Rules, Events and Facts

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, 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, 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, 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 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.

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, 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 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, 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 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.