Which was the first peak above eight thousand metres to be climbed?

The correct answer is A, Chamonix in France. The first Winter Olympic Games were held at Chamonix in the French Alps in 1924, the same year as the Paris Summer Olympics, and were recognised retrospectively by the International Olympic Committee as the first Winter Games. Option B is wrong because St Moritz in Switzerland hosted the second Winter Games in 1928 and hosted them again in 1948. Option C is wrong because Lake Placid in the United States hosted the third Winter Games in 1932 and hosted them again in 1980. Option D is wrong because Oslo in Norway hosted the Winter Games of 1952; Norway is instead remembered as the country that leads the all-time Winter Olympic medal table. Until 1992 the Winter and Summer Games fell in the same year, and the cycle was shifted by two years so that Lillehammer followed Albertville after only two seasons.

The correct answer is B, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. They reached the summit on 29 May 1953 as part of a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt; Hillary was a New Zealander and Tenzing Norgay a Sherpa who later became the first director of field training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. Option A is wrong because Mallory and Irvine disappeared high on Everest in 1924 and it has never been established whether they reached the top. Option C is wrong because Messner and Habeler made the first ascent without supplementary oxygen, in 1978. Option D is wrong because Herzog and Lachenal made the first ascent of Annapurna I in 1950, the first eight-thousander ever climbed. Everest had been identified as the world's highest peak by Radhanath Sikdar of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, and was listed for years only as Peak XV before it was named.

The correct answer is C, Bachendri Pal. She reached the summit of Everest on 23 May 1984 as a member of an Indian expedition and became the first Indian woman and the fifth woman in the world to do so. Option A is wrong because Santosh Yadav holds a different distinction: she became the first woman in the world to climb Everest twice, in 1992 and 1993, and also summited by the difficult Kangshung face. Option B is wrong because Arunima Sinha, who climbed in 2013, is remembered as the first female amputee in the world to reach the summit. Option D is wrong because Premlata Agarwal, who climbed in 2011, was the oldest Indian woman to do so at the time. A useful ordering is Junko Tabei in 1975 as the first woman in the world, Bachendri Pal in 1984 as the first Indian woman, and Santosh Yadav in 1992 and 1993 as the first woman to do it twice.

The correct answer is B, skeleton. In skeleton the athlete lies face down and head first on a small sled and steers it down an ice track by shifting body weight. Option A is wrong because in luge the athlete lies on the back and goes down feet first, which is the pairing most often reversed in examinations. Option C is wrong because bobsleigh uses a larger enclosed sled with a crew of two or four, a steering mechanism and brakes. Option D is wrong because curling has nothing to do with sleds at all: granite stones are slid along a sheet of ice towards a target called the house while team mates sweep the ice ahead of the stone, which is why it is called chess on ice.

The correct answer is B, cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. In the biathlon a competitor skis a cross-country course and stops at a range to shoot at targets, with a penalty of extra distance or time for each miss; the sport grew out of military patrol skiing in Scandinavia. Option A is wrong because the combination of ski jumping with a cross-country race is the Nordic combined, which is the event most often confused with the biathlon. Option C is wrong because speed skating and figure skating are separate ice sports and are never combined into one event. Option D is wrong because alpine skiing and snowboarding are also separate disciplines with their own medal events. The modern biathlon is contested over several distances, with sprint, pursuit, individual, mass start and relay events, and the shooting is done both prone and standing.