In the spirit of the Olympics, it is appropriate to start a thread dedicated to all sort of trivial matters related to the Games: records, athletes, history, and the like. Feel free to post any question. One condition though, you must now the answer.
A few questions to start it off:
Name the 4 cities that have hosted 2 Olympiads.
Who is the only man to undergo a sex change operation and win a gold medal as a woman?
Where does the name for the marathon race come from?
That comes from the city of Marathon in Greece, where some dude ran 26 miles from a battle to deliver a message that they had won, and then fell down dead.
I dunno the answers to the other ones tho.
I know LA has done it twice.
as for my question: name the swimmer who won the most golds in one olympics
Off the top of my head, Los Angeles, Innsbruck, Lake Placid and Rome (not positive on those last two).
the swimmer is Mark Spitz.
I don’t remember the name of the transgendered Olympian but I know no one knew until she passed away and the mortician noticed something was amiss, down there.
Name any two people to win four gold medals in any one event (meaning four olympics). Also name the weightlifter who recently failed in his bid to become the 9th man to win gold in the same event four times. His nickname will do fine.
Two-time host cities: LA, St. Moritz, Innsbruck, and Lake Placid
Al Oerter won the discus in '56, '60, '64 and '68.
Carl Lewis won the long jump in '84, '88, '92 and '96
The weightlifter is Naim Suleymanoglu, nicknamed Pocket Hercules.
To answer the original questions I posted:
Ivar, the transgendered Olympian is Stella Walsh. She/he won gold in the 100 meter dash in 1932.
Friedo, you are correct. After the Greeks defeated the Persians at Marathon (490 B.C.E), a messenger was sent to Athens to inform them about the good news. After running for 26 miles and delivering the message he promptly collapsed from the fatigue and died. It’s a shame he wasn’t timed, though. He might have set a not yet broken world record. I heard those Greeks were pretty damn fast in the old times.
As to the 4 cities to host the Olympics twice, I failed to specify that I was referring to the summer Olympics. They are Athens, London, Paris and Los Angeles. It must be stated that the IOC did not officially recognize the 1906 games held in Athens. If somebody knows why, please tell me. Nonetheless, St. Moritz, Inssbruck and Lake Placid all hosted the Winter Games twice.
Onto more questions:
Roman emperor who banned the games?
Longest standing swimming world record?
And, to finish this round, an easy one, what’s the Olympic motto?
I’m going to answer the easy one so I can come back later and post a question:
Motto: citius, altius, fortius – swifter, higher, stronger.
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I have a question!!
Except I don’t know the answer to it - What was the first team sport in the Olympics? (Not team like gymnastics, team like water polo.)
I read this question a long long time ago and never learned the answer.
…courtesy infopop.com:
American Myer Prinstein finished runner-up in the 1900 long jump in Paris, despite not even showing up for the finals. Prinstein sat out the finals because it was against his beliefs to participate on Sunday. Qualifying jumps counted back then so he took second on the basis of those. As legend has it, he was so angry at eventual gold-medal winning jumper Alvin Kraenzlein for competing in the finals that he punched him in the face.
The 1912 Greco-Roman wrestling match in Stockholm between Finn Alfred Asikainen and Russian Martin Klein lasted more than 11 hours. Klein eventually won but was too exhausted to participate in the championship match so he settled for the silver.
Did you ever wonder why the official distance of a marathon was exactly 26 miles, 385 yards? In 1908, the marathon standard had been set at exactly 26 miles. However, at the Olympic marathon in London, it was decided that the royal family needed a better view of the finish line so organizers added an extra 385 yards to the race so the finish line would be in front of the royal box. And it’s been that way ever since.
The five interlocking rings of the Olympic flag symbolize the five continents of the world (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas) “linked together in friendship.” Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin claimed that at least one of the rings’ colors (blue, yellow, black, green, and red, along with the white background) was present in each country’s national flag.
World record, but no gold medal: In 1924, American Robert LeGendre shattered the world long jump record with a leap of 25 feet, four inches. However, the jump was part of the pentathlon competition and LeGendre could muster only a third-place finish overall. The actual long jump competition was won with a jump of 24 feet, five inches.
Stella the FellaPoland’s Stella Walsh (Stanislawa Walasiewicz)won the women’s 100-meter race at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, becoming the first woman to break the 12-second barrier. When she was killed in 1980 as an innocent victim in a robbery attempt, an autopsy declared her to be a male.
Danish rider Lis Hartel won the silver medal in the 1952 equestrian dressage event in Helsinki. Hartel suffered from an inflammation of the spinal cord known as poliomyelitis, which required her to be lifted on and off her horse each time.
Before there was Kerri Strug, there was Japan’s Shun Fujimoto. In the men’s team gymnastics competition in 1976, he actually broke his kneecap while performing in the floor exercise. The following day, however, he needed a top-notch performance in the rings for Japan to secure the gold. With no pain killers, he performed a near flawless routine and stuck the landing, putting a tremendous amount of pressure on his injured knee. He grimaced in pain as he held his position for the judges, then finally collapsed in agony. Japan won the team gold by just four tenths of a point over the Soviet Union.
And you thought they just used a match. Did you know that traditionally the Olympic flame in Olympia, Greece is rekindled every two years using the sun’s rays and a concave reflective mirror? Note: This year, cloudy skies prevented the “traditional” lighting.
In 1928, reportedly six of the eight entrants in the women’s 800-meter race collapsed at the finish line in an “exhausted state.” Poor training methods and the brutal Amsterdam sun were the two major causes of distress. That event was subsequently cancelled until 1960.
Only two countries have attended every modern Olympics. Care to guess them?
Only two countries? Greece and Australia!
What’s the weight of the men’s discus? Woman’s discus?