Young, Gifted, and Black Trivia Quiz

Answer: 4x200m relay

James Cleveland 'Jesse' Owens won the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay (team) gold medals. Owens was the first male African-American athlete to be sponsored when Adi Dassler (founder of Adidas) convinced him to wear Adidas shoes.

Owens struggled after the Olympics when commercial offers never materialised and his amateur status was withdrawn. He made a living as a sports promoter, then as a dry cleaner and gas station attendant. After filing for bankruptcy, Owens worked as a US 'goodwill ambassador'. Jesse Owens died of lung cancer in 1980.

Answer: Jamaica

Benjamin Sinclair Johnson was born in Falmouth, Jamaica. He won two Olympic bronze medals in the 1984 games (100m and the 4x100m relay) before eventually being disqualified and losing his 1988 Olympic gold medal (100m). After several failed drug tests, Johnson was eventually banned for life from competing internationally.

He could technically race in Canada, but nobody would race against him as they could also face suspension.

Answer: Long jump

Frederick Carlton Lewis won a total of 10 Olympic medals (with nine of those gold) between 1984 and 1996. He won medals in 100m, 200m, long jump, and the 4x100m relay. His only Olympic silver medal was won in Seoul (1988) for the 200m.

In 1984, Lewis set out to equal Jesse Owens' record of four track and field gold medals at the one Olympic games, which he did amid controversy of his winning of the long jump gold (he forfeited his last four jumps knowing he had won the gold with his first jump).

In oddities, Lewis has been drafted to both the NBA (Chicago Bulls, 1984) and the NFL (Dallas Cowboys, 1984) but didn't play for either team or in either competition.

Answer: British championships

The fourth major event is the World Championships.

Linford Christie was the first European man to break the 10-second mark in the 100m sprint. With only one Olympic gold medal to his name (Barcelona, 1992 - 100m), Christie has gold medals from the World and European Championships and the Commonwealth Games. His silver from the 1998 Olympics (Seoul) was awarded after the disqualification of Ben Johnson (due to a positive drug test). His 1992 gold was also notable as he became the oldest Olympic 100m champion, at age 32.

Christie's career finished after receiving a two-year ban for taking performance-enhancing substances, even though he has denied any use of any illegal substance. He is also banned for life from British Olympic Association teams.

Answer: 4x200m relay

In 2009 Usain St. Leo Bolt also became the first man to hold the 100m and 200m Olympic and World titles at the same time. His world record-breaking feats at the 2008 Olympics were repeated when he broke both his 100m and 200m records at the 2009 World Championships. It is estimated that Bolt could have run faster than his 9.69s in the 100m at the 2008 Olympics, as he visibly celebrated before crossing the line and also had a shoelace untied (he could've finished sub 9.60s).

Bolt's 200m world record at the 2008 Olympics was hampered by a 0.9m/s headwind, yet he still managed to beat Michael Johnson's 19.32s in a time of 19.30s. Usain Bolt's success at both Olympic and World events is seen to give hope to a sport that has been hampered by drug scandal over the previous few decades.

Answer: Nova Peris-Kneebone

Nova Peris-Kneebone was Australia's first, as a member of the 1996 women's hockey team. In 1997, she switched sports to compete in track and won two gold medals at the 1998 Commonwealth Games (200m and the 4x100m relay).

Cathy Freeman won her Olympic gold in the 400m at the 2000 games in Sydney. Freeman was Australia's first aboriginal athlete to compete in an Olympic Games (1992).

Dawn Fraser, one of Australia's finest athletes swam for Australia in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, was the first swimmer in Olympic history to win individual gold medals in the same event at three successive Olympic Games. Fraser is not of Aboriginal descent.

Evonne Goolagong Cawley was a world class Australian tennis player in the 1970s and 80s. She won fourteen Grand Slam titles, seven of those as an individual. Evonne Goolagong never competed for Australia in an Olympic Games.

Answer: 4x400m relay

The 100m, 200m, and the 4x100m relay all won Florence Griffith-Joyner 'Flo-Jo' a gold medal with the 200m winning time being a world record. Flo-Jo had a relatively short track career, retiring in late 1988. This retirement was dogged with controversy as she retired around the time that mandatory random drug testing was introduced to the sport. Although she denied any performance-enhancing drug use, her dramatic change in physique and race times in a short period of time made people suspicious.

Griffith-Joyner died in her sleep, at age 38, of suffocation during an epileptic fit. Her husband asked for testing to be done to prove his wife hadn't used steroids, but testing wasn't able to be done due to there not enough urine available in the bladder. Accurate testing could not be performed on other biological samples.

Answer: Phoenix Mercury

Although she was picked in the 2003 Draft by the Phoenix Mercury, Marion Jones never played in the league. In 2010, it was announced that Jones had signed to play for Tulsa Shock (formerly Detroit Shock). Jones' experience in basketball came from playing in college at the University of North Carolina.

Her 2000 Olympic, 2001 IAAF World Championship, and 2002 IAAF World Cup placings have been scrubbed as a result of her admission of performance-enhancing drug use, and lying about it (to media, sporting bodies and grand juries). She was ordered (and agreed) to return all medals and prizes won since she admitted first using performance-enhancing drugs in the lead-up to September 2000.

Answer: Be named in a US Olympic team

Louise Stokes and Tydie Pickett became the first Black females to be named in a US Olympic team (1932). Both women were named as members of the 4x100m relay team and traveled to Los Angeles yet neither woman competed as they were replaced by other female athletes who were white. Louise Stokes was again named in the 1936 US Olympic team and was, again, replaced by a white woman. Note that Tydie Pickett is named in several sources with her name spelled as 'Tydia'.

Audrey Patterson became the first African-American woman to win an Olympic medal (bronze - 200m sprint) and Alice Coachman the first to win an Olympic gold medal (high jump), both at the same Olympic Games in 1948.

Answer: Gender test

Caster Semenya was ordered to undergo a gender test; it later being revealed that Semenya was a hermaphrodite with internal testes instead of ovaries which in turn means that she had three times the testosterone of a 'normal' woman. Semenya was allowed to keep her 800m 2009 World Championship gold medal with the IAAF in a quandary as to how to deal with this unique case.