Row, Row, Row Your Boat Trivia Quiz

Answer: River Seine

The second edition of the modern Olympic Games were held in Paris, France in 1900. The rowing competition consisted of races in four different disciplines - single sculls, and coxed pairs, fours and eights - in which a total of eight nations competed. The races were all held on a 1,750 metre course down a section of the River Seine to the north-west of the centre of Paris.

The first Olympic rowing competition should have been held at the 1896 Athens Olympics, but the event - which had been scheduled to be held on the open water of the Mediterranean - had to be cancelled due to bad weather.

The incorrect options are major rivers running through some of the other early Olympic host cities (St Louis in 1904, London in 1908 and Amsterdam in 1928).

Answer: 1829

The Boat Race between crews from the UK's famous Oxford and Cambridge Universities first took place in 1829 when a couple of friends who were attending the rival institutions organised a one-off race on the River Thames at Henley. It took until 1836 for a second race to be organised and the event didn't become an annual competition until 1856. The first race over the traditional 'championship course' between Putney and Mortlake in West London took place in 1845. Presumably, the rowers who competed in these early races would have had little inkling that their inter-university competition would one day be watched live by millions of viewers around the world.

Although the length, location and general scale of the race have changed since the first event in 1829, the two teams still compete in the original colours that they chose for the inaugural event - Oxford are the "Dark Blues", while Cambridge are known as the "Light Blues" (which in reality is a sort of pale greenish-blue).

Answer: Germany

The first World Rowing Cup competition existed from 1990 to 1995 as an event for single scullers only. It was revived in 1997 as a multi-discipline competition with three (or four in 2001) constituent regattas. The first regatta of the new competition was held at that Oberschleissheim Regatta Course, an artificial rowing lake constructed in Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympic Games, and further World Cup regattas were held there regularly in the period up to 2012. Countries earn points based on their boats' finishing positions in the disciplines included in Olympic competition and the country that has the most points by the end of the three regattas is declared the overall winner. The crews are awarded gold, silver and bronze medals for top three finishes in individual races.

While the inaugural event was won by Switzerland, Germany went on to win the cup for the next nine years, before eventually losing out to Great Britain in 2007. New Zealand became the next nation to claim their first World Rowing Cup when they won in 2014.

Answer: Harvard and Yale

The race in question is the Harvard-Yale Regatta, also known as the Yale-Harvard Boat Race, and it is contested, somewhat unsurprisingly, by crews from Harvard and Yale Universities. Both of these institutions are members of the elite Ivy League. When the two universities' rowing clubs challenged each other to a competition on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee in 1852 they created the first inter-collegiate sporting competition in the USA and formed the basis for a long-standing sporting rivalry and tradition.

The race later moved to the Thames River in Connecticut, making it the second university boat race to be held on a river called the Thames (the first being Britain's famous Boat Race).

The incorrect options are made up from the six other members of the Ivy League.

Answer: Women's Coxed Eights (Legs, trunk and arms)

The sport of para-rowing classifies athletes into different categories based on their type of disability. In 2008 when the sport first appeared at the Paralympic Games, these categories consisted of "Legs, trunk and arms", "Trunk and Arms" or "Arms only" - descriptions which reflected an increasing level of disability.

In 2008 the inaugural rowing competition at the Beijing Games consisted of four different disciplines - separate men's and women's single sculls events, mixed double sculls and a mixed coxed four - with just one adaptive rowing category allowed for each discipline. The single sculls events for both men and women were for rowers racing using only their arms to propel the boat, the double sculls had rowers with slightly more range of movement (trunk and arms), while the coxed fours contained rowers with fewer limitations.

Answer: Only non-Olympic disciplines are contested

The World Rowing Championships includes races from a wider variety of rowing disciplines than those that are included in the Olympic programme. In an Olympic year, the boats that are eligible to complete at the Games do not take part in the world championships. Often on these four-yearly occasions, the World Junior Rowing Championships (for under 18s) have been moved to be held at the same regatta as the remaining part of the senior competition.

The non-Olympic rowing disciplines have changed over the decades, so the exact programme of the world championships in Olympic years has also changed over time. However, it has usually included most of the lightweight disciplines and the wider set of para-rowing events.

Answer: The Oxford and Cambridge reserve Boat Race crews

The "Isis-Goldie" race is a support event held during the build up to the annual Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge and is contested by the men's reserve crews from each university. The race was first run officially in 1965 and quite often yields a different winner to the main event. Isis is the second Oxford boat and was named after an alternative name for the River Thames that is specifically applied to the section that flows through the city of Oxford. Goldie is the second Cambridge boat and takes its name from a 19th century president of the Cambridge University Boat Club.

Britain's four-time Olympic rowing gold medallist, Sir Matthew Pinsent, competed for Oxford in the Boat Race in 1990, 1991 and 1993. He was in the winning team on the first two occasions but on the losing side in 1993.

Answer: Massachusetts

Head races in rowing are a specific type of time trial event where boats set off one at a time and the winner is the one who completes the course in the fastest time. Contrary to what the name might suggest, these races do not generally involve crews going "head to head" for victory or take place on the headwaters (source) of a river.

The Head of the Charles Regatta is held annually on a three mile stretch of the Charles River where it flows between the cities of Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The regatta was first founded in 1965 and has since grown to become one of the largest in the world with dozens of different competitions and thousands of competitors. The various winners all receive a bronze medal to mark their achievement.

Answer: 2018

The first European Championships (not to be confused with the UEFA football tournament or the very similar European Games) were predominantly held in Glasgow, Scotland in August 2018. The aim behind the project was to co-ordinate the individual European Championships for a range of different sports into a combined event with a higher profile that provided additional television coverage and promotional opportunities. The inaugural event included athletics, cycling, diving, golf, gymnastics, rowing swimming and triathlon. The athletics element of the competition was held in Berlin, Germany.

Romania topped the medals table for the rowing with three gold, two silver and two bronze medals, a haul which formed the majority of their medals in the overall competition.

The European Rowing Championships were founded in 1893 and held annually (with the exception of the years during the First and Second World Wars) until 1973. The competition was restarted in 2007.

Answer: Henley Royal Regatta

The Henley Royal Regatta was first held in 1839 and the Grand Challenge Cup is its oldest and most prestigious competition. The inaugural winners were a crew from the University of Cambridge's Trinity College. It is an open competition and has been won on multiple occasions over the years by crews from countries such as Germany, the USA, the former Soviet Union, Canada and Australia. The first foreign winners were from the Royal Club Nautique de Gand in Belgium in 1906.

The regatta takes place in the town of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire and has included the word 'royal' in its title since 1851 when Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, granted it his royal patronage. Since his death in 1861, it has become traditional for the reigning monarch to take on the role of patron.