Who is remembered in Indian sport as the Payyoli Express?

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.