Disputed Olympic Champions Trivia Quiz

Answer: The first winner was disqualified for breaking British running rules

The men's 400m Olympic champion in 1908 was Wyndham Halswelle of Great Britain, who also holds the dubious honour of being the only Olympic champion to have won their event in the absence of any competition. The first 400m final had been won by the American athlete, John Carpenter, but in the process he had used his elbows to prevent Halswelle from overtaking him on the final straight. While this was an accepted tactic in America at the time, it was deemed illegal under British rules and - since the event was held in Britain - Carpenter was disqualified. His team-mates then refused to take part in the re-staged event, leaving Halswelle to leisurely run the 400m on his own and claim a gold medal (his 'winning' time was nearly two seconds slower than the time he posted in qualification).

At the time of the 1908 Olympics, Halswelle was a British army officer. He was killed in action in 1915, while serving in France during the First World War.

Answer: Baseball

In addition to his victories in the pentathlon and decathlon, Jim Thorpe also competed in the individual high jump and long jump events, placing fourth and seventh respectively. In addition to his two gold medals he also returned to the USA from Stockholm with two special prizes donated by King Gustav V of Sweden and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. However, he lost both his medals and titles just a year later thanks to his previous career in minor-league baseball. The notoriety gained him genuine (but short-lived) professional careers in baseball, football and basketball, however he died in 1953 in relative poverty.

Nearly thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee overturned their decision and reinstated Thorpe's titles and gold medals. However, they didn't strip those honours from the men who had been elevated from second place in 1913, so history now records two winners of each event - Jim Thorpe and Norway's Ferdinand Bie in the pentathlon and Jim Thorpe and Sweden's Hugo Wieslander in the decathlon.

Answer: Track cycling: sprint

In the sprint event of the track cycling at the 1936 Olympics, two riders competed against each other in each round, with the first to win two of a possible three races going through to the next stage. The final was contested by Nikolaus Anton "Toni" Merkens of Germany and his long-term rival, Arie van Vliet of the Netherlands. In the first of the three races, van Vliet attempted to overtake Merkens, only for Merkens to block him by riding him up the banking - a clear foul under the event's rules. Despite complaints from the Dutch team, the event continued and Merkens was declared the Olympic champion when he won the second race cleanly. At the time, the normal penalty for committing a foul would have been a disqualification that would have resulted in the final going to a third, deciding race. However, Merkens was simply given a fine and the result was allowed to stand. Whether this decision was related to the fact that he was a German rider competing in the only Olympics to be held in Nazi Germany is unknown.

Arie van Vliet did have some consolation though, as he won a gold medal in the 1000m time trial event. Both men later turned professional; Merkens was killed during the Second World War, while van Vliet went on to win world championship titles in the post-war period.

Answer: A mysterious figure in black had run out in front of him

Conditions weren't very good at the Chamrousse ski resort near Grenoble on the day of the Olympic slalom competition, so the race was run in poor visibility. Karl Schranz's first attempt came to an abrupt halt about halfway down the course when he said he was forced to stop by a mysterious figure in black running across the course (who turned out to be a race official). He was granted another attempt and duly recorded the fastest time to be declared the Olympic champion. However, a later review of television footage of his first attempt identified that he had missed a gate near the top of the course and should have been disqualified prior to the odd incident that prematurely ended the run. The gold medal was then awarded to France's Jean-Claude Killy - giving him a clean sweep of the men's alpine ski events.

Sadly, this controversy wasn't the only one to affect Schranz's Olympic prospects. He was disqualified from the 1972 games for falling foul of a rule banning professional sportspeople from the competition.

Answer: Soviet Union

The USA dominated Olympic basketball in the 20th century, winning the first event held in 1936 and claiming the gold medal at every subsequent event until the Munich games of 1972. Starting as undisputed favourites, the USA was leading the Soviet Union by 50 points to 49 with just three seconds remaining on the clock. However, the Soviet coaching team chose that moment to dispute a time-out and the subsequent disruption led the referee to stop the match. After a lot of wrangling about the rights and wrongs of the situation (and with pretty much everyone confused as to whether the rules had been correctly applied) the match was restarted and the Soviet Union sneaked in one final basket to win the game by a single point. Needless to say, the USA team were outraged and ended up refusing to accept their silver medals in protest - the political situation between the two countries certainly didn't help matters either.

Despite this blot on the USA's Olympic basketball record, they won a total of 14 basketball Olympic gold medals during the 20th century (11 by the men's team and three by the women's).

Answer: 1988 Seoul

Ben Jonson won the 100m gold medal race at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul in a world record time of 9.79 seconds. Sadly he didn't achieve this on his own merits, as he had taken the banned performance enhancing drug stanozolol - an anabolic steroid. His status as Olympic champion wasn't in dispute for long as he was summarily disqualified just three days after the event. Johnson was suspended from the sport for three years, but clearly hadn't learnt his lesson as he failed a further drugs test in 1993.

History now records the defending champion, Carl Lewis, as the 1988 Olympic 100m gold medallist in a world record time of 9.92 seconds. It took another 11 years before the world record legally reached 9.79 seconds - the American athlete Maurice Greene being the person responsible.

Answer: His opponent had landed many more punches

At the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, boxing ended up in the limelight for all the wrong reasons when a majority decision by the judges granted the gold medal to the South Korean boxer Park Si-Hun, despite the fact that his opponent, Roy Jones Jr. (USA), had landed nearly three times more punches than him. The stark disparity between the apparent score and the way the match had actually unfolded resulted in a major scandal for amateur boxing and an inevitable dispute over the result. Park's victory was upheld by the International Olympic Committee, but a new scoring system had been introduced by the time of the next games in Barcelona.

Later investigations uncovered that the three judges who voted for Park had been bribed by South Korean officials and two were subsequently banned from the sport.

Answer: It was his horse that failed the drugs test

Cian O'Connor is an Irish show jumper, so the legality of his victory in Athens relied on both horse and rider passing the mandatory drugs testing procedures. Unfortunately for O'Connor, his horse, Waterford Crystal, was found to have tested positive for a banned substance. Although he was not deemed to have deliberately attempted to boost his horse's performance (the drugs had been administered by a vet treating Waterford Crystal for a leg injury), he was stripped of his gold medal and Olympic title. The second-placed rider, Rodrigo Pessoa of Brazil, was elevated to the position of Olympic champion.

The incident was particularly unfortunate for Ireland as O'Connor had been their only medallist at the 2004 Olympics. It also compounded an unfortunate Games for equestrian sport, as the winners of the team show jumping gold medal (Germany) lost their victory after one of their horses also failed a drugs test.

Answer: quadruple jump

The quadruple jump is considered to be the hardest possible jump that a figure skater can incorporate into their programme. At the 2010 Olympics (held in Vancouver) Evgeni Plushenko of Russia landed a very difficult quadruple jump carried out in combination with a triple toe-loop, but was beaten by the American Evan Lysacek who didn't attempt one. The argument was basically about difficulty versus quality or whether a better-executed, but simpler routine should triumph over a slightly flawed, but very difficult one.

Lysacek's victory in 2010 was the first since 1994 not to have included a quadruple jump. It may have created a lot of criticism and created accusations of conspiracy, but it was never officially challenged. However, the sport's governing body subsequently increased the number of points allocated to the quadruple jump to incentivise skaters to produce more difficult routines.

Answer: Liberty Bell Classic

The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics stemmed from the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan that began in December 1979. The US President, Jimmy Carter, prevented the US team from entering the Olympic Games and a further 64 nations that received an invitation to the Games failed to turn up (although not all of these were deliberately supporting the boycott). Some of the larger nations among them included Argentina, Canada, China, Japan and West Germany.

A total of 29 nations sent competitors to the Liberty Bell Classic (also known as the Olympic Boycott Games) held in Philadelphia just before the start of the Olympics. However, this wasn't really a rival event as it only included athletics events rather than the full range of sports and not all of the countries who turned up actually took part in the boycott. The interesting point to note is that some of the times and distances recorded by the winners of the Liberty Bell Classic would have been sufficient to win Olympic gold that year. So although the 1980 Olympic champions are unlikely to ever be described as 'disputed', there are certainly some "what if" questions that will always remain unanswered.