Sports trivia questions and answers
30 sports trivia questions with the answers and a fact for each: football and the World Cup, tennis, golf, Formula 1 and rallying, the Olympics, darts, snooker, horse racing and a few games played sitting down. Read them as a sport quiz for yourself, use them for a pub quiz round, or press the button and play a Sport round live with everyone answering on their own phone.
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The 30 sports quiz questions
- 1Rallying
Which manufacturer's Quattro brought four-wheel drive to world rallying in the early 1980s?
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BAudi
In a Quattro, Michèle Mouton became the first woman to win a World Rally Championship event at Sanremo in 1981.
- 2
How many rounds are there in a modern world-title boxing match?
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B12
Title fights were 15 rounds until the 1980s. The cut to 12 followed the death of Duk-koo Kim after a 14th-round knockout in 1982.
- 3Swimming
Which of the four competitive swimming strokes is the slowest?
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CBreaststroke
It's also the oldest: the first swimming races in the 1800s were all breaststroke, and butterfly began as a rule-bending variation of it.
- 4Rallying
Colin McRae won the 1995 World Rally Championship driving for which manufacturer?
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CSubaru
His name lived on in the Colin McRae Rally video games, which later became the DiRT series.
- 5Formula 1
Ayrton Senna lost his life during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix at which circuit?
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AImola
The Imola circuit is officially named after Enzo Ferrari and his son Dino.
- 6Premier League
Who was the first non-British manager to win the Premier League?
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AArsène Wenger
Wenger's Arsenal did the league and FA Cup double in 1998, his first full season in charge.
- 7Tennis
Which of the four Grand Slam tournaments is played on clay?
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BFrench Open
That famous red 'clay' is actually a thin layer of crushed brick spread over a bed of white limestone.
- 8
How many laps make up the Indianapolis 500?
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B200
The 500 is miles — 200 laps of the two-and-a-half-mile oval. The first race, in 1911, took nearly seven hours.
- 9
How many Grand Slam singles titles did Serena Williams win?
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C23
The Open-era record. She won the 2017 Australian Open while about eight weeks pregnant.
- 10Golf
Which golfer was nicknamed 'The Golden Bear'?
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CJack Nicklaus
Nicklaus won 18 major championships, a men's record that Tiger Woods has never quite managed to catch.
- 11
Who is the only footballer to have won the World Cup three times?
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CPele
Pele won it in 1958, aged just 17, then again in 1962 and 1970. He scored in the final on his first and last occasions.
- 12Baseball
Which team ended an 86-year wait to win the World Series in 2004?
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CBoston Red Sox
The drought was blamed on the 'Curse of the Bambino', after the club sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
- 13Snooker
In snooker, the raised rest used to bridge over another ball is called the…?
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BSpider
There's also the swan, with a long neck for reaching over a whole cluster of balls.
- 14Clubs
Johan Cruyff inspired which Dutch club to three European Cups in a row from 1971 to 1973?
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DAjax
Cruyff famously wore the number 14 shirt at a time when starting players almost always wore 1 to 11.
- 15World Cup
The 1986 World Cup, home of Maradona's 'Hand of God', was hosted by which country?
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CMexico
Mexico stepped in after Colombia withdrew, becoming the first country to host the World Cup twice.
- 16
An Olympic swimming pool is how long?
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B50 metres
A 25-metre pool is called 'short course'.
- 17
How many players does an ice hockey team have on the ice at one time?
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BSix
Three forwards, two defenders and a goaltender. Lines change every 45 seconds or so, even in the middle of play.
- 18
What shape is a boxing ring?
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ASquare
It's called a ring because early bare-knuckle fights were held inside a rough ring of spectators. Mixed martial arts uses an eight-sided cage instead.
- 19Golf
Tiger Woods won his first Masters in which year?
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B1997
He won by a record 12 strokes at the age of 21, becoming the youngest Masters champion ever.
- 20Cards
Pontoon is the traditional British name for which card game?
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DBlackjack
'Pontoon' is thought to be a soldier's mangling of the French name, vingt-et-un.
- 21Board games
In Monopoly, how much do you collect for passing Go?
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C200
It's 200 whether the board deals in dollars, pounds or euros. The Free Parking jackpot everyone plays with isn't in the rulebook.
- 22
The martial art judo originated in which country?
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AJapan
Jigoro Kano created it in 1882; the name means 'the gentle way'. It joined the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964.
- 23
What colour card does a soccer referee show to send a player off?
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BRed
English referee Ken Aston got the idea from traffic lights while stuck at a junction; the cards were first used at the 1970 World Cup.
- 24Horse racing
The American Triple Crown is the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the…?
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BBelmont Stakes
Secretariat completed his 1973 Triple Crown by winning the Belmont by a scarcely believable 31 lengths.
- 25Darts
A perfect leg of 501 takes how many darts?
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DNine
John Lowe threw the first televised nine-darter in 1984 and pocketed £102,000 for his trouble.
- 26Host cities
The 2000 Summer Olympics were held in which city?
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CSydney
Cathy Freeman lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony, then won 400 m gold ten days later.
- 27Formula 1
Which driver won the 2009 world title with the newly formed Brawn GP team?
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AJenson Button
Ross Brawn bought the team from Honda for a nominal £1; a year later it was sold on and became Mercedes.
- 28Champions
How many gold medals did Jesse Owens win at the 1936 Berlin Games?
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CFour
His four golds came in the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and 4x100 m relay — all inside a week.
- 29
In which sport do competitors slide head first down an ice track on a small sled?
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BSkeleton
Luge is feet first. Skeleton riders hit around 130 km/h with their chins a few centimetres above the ice.
- 30
Which country won the first Rugby World Cup, in 1987?
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CNew Zealand
The All Blacks beat France 29-9 in the final in Auckland. South Africa has since overtaken them with four titles, the latest in 2023.
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Sports quiz FAQ
Can I use these sports trivia questions for my own quiz night?
That is what the page is for. Read them out at a pub quiz, paste them into a work quiz or a family quiz night, and keep the answers hidden until the table has committed. If you would rather not keep score by hand, the button on this page runs a Sport round on everyone's phones.
Are the answers on the page?
Yes. Every question has a "Show the answer" toggle with the right option and a one-line fact, so you can quiz yourself first or read straight through with the answers open.
How do I play a Sport quiz round live?
Press "Play a Sport round". It opens the host page with the Sport category already picked. The room shows a join code, everyone else opens huddlequiz.com/join on their phone and types it, and ten questions later there is a winner on the board. No accounts and nothing to install.
Will the live game ask the same questions?
Some of them. The game draws at random from a bigger Sport pool, of which this page is a sample, so a live round mixes questions you have read here with ones you have not.
How hard are they?
Mixed. They are written for adults and teenagers at pub-quiz level, so a table of four should get most of them between them and argue about the rest.