When Vampires Come Out To Play Quiz

Answer: Nadia Comaneci

Nadia was born in Romania in 1961 and came to prominence at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal where she won three gold, one silver and one bronze medal competing with the Romanian gymnastics team. During the same games she also became the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 in Olympic Games competition.

Larisa Latynina - born in and competed for the former U.S.S.R.
Vera Caslavska - born in and competed for the former Czechoslavakia.
Mary Lou Retton - born in and competed for the U.S.A.

Answer: Javelin

One could rightfully argue that the javelin throw is one of the oldest sports known to humankind. It is not hard to imagine that stoneage men competed against each other to see who could throw their spears the furthest or who was most accurate at hitting a target.

The javelin was an event in the Ancient Greek Olympics and was introduced to the Modern Olympics in 1908 (London) for men and 1932 (Los Angeles) for women. The javelin throw is also one of the disciplines in the men's decathlon and women's heptathlon.

Answer: Croquet

Cricket and baseball are the two most obvious bat and ball games mentioned and pesapallo is a popular game played in Finland. Pesapallo is similar to baseball in a general sense yet at the same time has many differences. One of these is the pitch of the ball; unlike baseball where the pitcher throws the ball horizontally towards the batter, the pitcher and batter in pesapallo both stand facing each other across the batting plate where the pitcher throws the ball in an upwise direction for the batter to hit.

The stick used for hitting the balls in croquet is called a mallet.

Answer: The Open Championship (golf)

The Open Championship, or British Open, is the oldest of the four major golfing championships of the world and the only one to be played outside of the U.S. It was first played in 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club in Ayrshire, Scotland with just eight competitors. This tournament was won by Willie Parker Senior and he was awarded a red leather belt with a silver buckle for his efforts. Things have come a long way since then; the 2011 Open winner, Darren Clarke from Northern Ireland pocketed a cool £900,000.

Although The Open Championship has never been contested in the dark of night, night-time golf is immensely popular in Singapore where many of the golf courses are floodlit to make this possible.

Answer: Mike Tyson

After losing his WBA title to Holyfield the previous year, a rematch was granted to Tyson for the 28th of June 1997. At the beginning of the third round, Tyson left his corner sans mouthguard. This was noticed by the match referee who ordered Tyson back to his corner to put it in.

This does suggest that the attack on Holyfield was premeditated. In the final minute of the same round, Tyson bit off an inch long piece of Holyfield's right ear and spat it onto the floor of the ring. Tyson was disqualified from the match and subsequently had his boxing licence suspended for just over a year.

Answer: Tentpegging

The sport of tentpegging is believed to have originated in India where mounted soldiers galloped through the British military camps and using either spears or lances would spike the wooden tent pegs and remove them from the ground. When the tents had collapsed on the sleeping British soldiers, another wave of mounted Indians would swoop on the tents and attack the confused enemy. Tentpegging became a standard military training drill for mounted divisions right up until the end of World War II.

As a discipline, tentpegging is recognised by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, one of only ten equine sports to recieve this honour.

Answer: Second

The Olympic tradition of awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to the first, second and third placegetters respectively was first observed at the St. Louis games of 1904. This practice has been adopted by many other sporting bodies worldwide. At the first Modern Olympics, held in Athens in 1896, a silver medal was awarded to an athlete finishing first in their event with the runner-up receiving a bronze medal. Cups and trophies replaced medals in the next Olympics held in Paris in 1900.

Answer: Sabre

Epee, foil and sabre are the three major types of swords used in the sport of fencing and are the only three used in Olympic competition. Both the foil and epee are thrusting weapons and points are only scored when the tip of the blade makes contact with the opponent.

When fencing with the foil, only hits made to the torso, excluding the arms, are deemed legal whereas hits to the entire body are scored when using the epee. The sabre can be used for both thrusting and slashing with hits to any part of the body above the waist, excluding the hands, scoring points.

Answer: Sumo

The sprinkling of salt is just one small part of the pre-bout ritual that can often last longer than the bout itself. When the wrestlers are announced by name they enter the ring, face the audience, clap their hands and perform a series of leg stomping exercises.

They then leave the ring and rinse their mouths with a ladle of water, dry their lips with a paper towel and enter the ring once more. This time they face each other and do a bit more hand clapping before stretching their arms out to show they are not concealing weapons.

They leave the ring again and grab their handful of salt to scatter around. It is believed to purify the ring of any evil spirits and has its origins in the ancient Shinto religion.

Answer: Simon Garlick

While there is no doubt that the fearsome trio of 'Captain Blood' Jack Dyer, Robbie 'Mad Dog' Muir and 'Big Bad Bustling' Barry Hall would be more than capable of handling themselves well against any physical threat, (you don't earn those nicknames by being marshmallows), no coach in his right mind would leave a player named Garlick off of the team list when Vampires are likely to be present at the game.

Although spelt differently to the common garden variety of garlic, this wasn't enough to stop Simon earning the unenviable nickname 'Stinky' during his 44 games with the Sydney Swans between 1994-1997 and 137 games with the Western Bulldogs between 1998-2004.