Spark of Inspiration Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pierre de Coubertin

Baron de Coubertin (1863-1937) was a French intellectual who was deeply invested in the history and future of physical education in particular. A modern revival of the Olympics seemed to him like the answer to many problems. It would encourage athleticism at the same time that it strengthened bonds between peoples; he even hoped it might promote world peace, by analogy to the legend of ancient Greece's Olympic truces. Of course, no pure idealist could ever master the politics necessary to launch something like the Olympic Games, so it was fortunate indeed that de Coubertin had political skills (and political connections!) as well. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894; in 1896, after the success of the first modern Games, de Coubertin became the IOC's second president.

As a footnote, we should of course recognize de Coubertin's own success in the Games. In 1912, believe it or not, the Olympics included an arts competition - and the President of the IOC, proud poet of "Ode to Sport," walked away with the gold medal in literature.

Answer: St. Andrews

The seaside Old Course at St. Andrews has been a golfing haven for more than 450 years, despite a two-decade interlude in which the golfers had to compete with rabbit farmers for use of the greens. Many golfing inspirations originated at St. Andrews. Eighteen holes became the standard course size worldwide after 1764, when the Old Course combined some of its 22 holes to make a total of 18.

The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews (or, rather, its daughter organization the R&A) co-administers the official rules of golf. And St. Andrews is the most frequent host of the British Open (also known as the Open Championship), a major event in any professional golfer's calendar.

Answer: The Marylebone Cricket Club

It may seem odd that the regulations of such an international sport are administered by a club named for a neighborhood of London - but history and tradition have a lot of weight! In the early days of cricket, when local games were played for fun, players didn't need much codification of the rules. By the middle of the eighteenth century, though, the sport was getting serious: matches were no longer strictly local, and were sometimes the subjects of some very large bets. The need for something like the Laws of Cricket was clear, and a few different groups tried their hands at it before the Marylebone Cricket Club's version was widely adopted.

Nowadays, the International Cricket Council governs the sport worldwide, including supplementary rules for Test matches, but the Laws themselves are still in the keeping of a London club so traditional that it didn't admit women as members until the 1990s.

Answer: YMCA

The YMCA, or Young Men's Christian Association, was known even before the 1978 Village People hit for its provision of athletic and housing facilities to boys and young men. James Naismith (1861-1939) had moved to Springfield, Massachusetts to take a position at the YMCA International Training School there, but as winter began he found a serious challenge. In bitter weather, how could he keep a crowd of energetic young people occupied and physically engaged, while also preventing them from hurting one another? After a great deal of thought, he came up with a game that was remarkably similar to modern basketball. There were, of course, a few differences: initially the game was played with a soccer ball, and the baskets were peach baskets with bottoms. Every time a point was scored, somebody had to climb up and fish out the ball!

The sport was tremendously popular, though. Soon, the equipment had been improved, the team numbers had been finalized, and college teams were playing against each other within five years. The rest, as they say, is history - and a very lucrative industry.

Answer: Starting blocks

A crouch start on level ground is a bit risky: the sudden push-off on hearing the starting signal can make your feet slip backward. For a while after this starting technique became widespread, race organizers would give the runners trowels so they could dig themselves toeholds - but this system has obvious disadvantages, both in terms of ensuring uniform conditions between racers and races, and in terms of track maintenance problems. So the invention of starting blocks, which provide two inclined planes to hold runners' feet at adjustable angles and positions, was a real boon.

It was Charlie Booth, an Australian, who had this spark of inspiration, and the blocks have been evolving and improving ever since. The highest-quality modern blocks now include built-in loudspeakers and pressure sensors, so that every athlete gets the start signal at exactly the same time, and so that official timekeepers can measure the time at which each runner's feet actually leave the block.

Answer: FIFA

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association, formed in 1904 and headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, organizes the World Cup for both men and women, as well as Olympic football competitions and various friendly matches. It isn't the body that determines the rules of the game - that's the IFAB (or International Football Association Board), half of whose members are representatives of FIFA. (The other half come from England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.)

FIFA's impressive history and influence have not protected it from scandal, including accusations of corruption, cheating, and (perhaps most damaging of all) incompetence. Strangely, the federation is never really given credit for improving employment prospects for investigative sports journalists...

Answer: Cooperstown

In the early 1900s, there was quite a lot of debate about the origins of baseball. Some argued that the sport was obviously a variation of the British game of rounders. Others, usually out of patriotic instincts, insisted that baseball was purely homegrown American. The Mills Commission formed in 1905 to settle the issue once and for all, and wound up declaring in 1908 that baseball was an American sport after all, invented in Cooperstown, New York by Abner Doubleday in 1839. The historical backing for this theory was extremely dubious. Among other problems, Doubleday was in West Point in 1839, not Cooperstown at all, and it seemed odd that he would never once have mentioned that baseball was his brainchild in decades of diaries and letters.

Nevertheless, the legend was a popular one, especially with the Cooperstown locals - who have hosted the Hall of Fame, and all the lucrative tourism associated with it, since baseball's alleged hundredth anniversary in 1939. Doubleday's name has sadly eclipsed quite a few people who could more honestly be called baseball's founding fathers.

Answer: A newspaper with disappointing circulation numbers

"L'Auto" was a daily sports paper founded in 1900 to compete with "Le Vélo," whose coverage of an 1899 riot at a horse race had enraged its founders. (Perhaps "L'Auto"'s founders were easily enraged: in the riot, which was over the controversy of the Dreyfus affair, one of them had used a walking stick to club the president of France.) Disappointingly, "L'Auto" had a lot of trouble competing with its rival, and by 1902 its leadership was willing to consider any means of boosting circulation. The best idea anybody had was suggested by the paper's young cycling correspondent, Géo Lefèvre: a bicycle endurance race that would take riders all around France.

There were hiccups in the initial planning. Not very many cyclists had the money or ambition to enter a race that would last more than a month, so the length was cut and a daily stipend was offered to riders who met a minimum daily speed. With these changes, the first Tour de France, held in July 1903, was a huge success for the paper, ensuring another Tour in 1904 and driving "Le Vélo" out of business. It was less of a success for sportsmanship. Stretches of nighttime riding enabled incredible cheating: in 1904, organizers had to disqualify 12 cyclists, including the man who had won the first Tour, for sins as blatant as using trains and cars to progress faster through the course. Since that time, the Tour de France (run by the Amaury Sport Organization since the 1990s), has been a French institution and a mainstay of the sport, though it's never been wholly free of cheating or controversy.

Answer: The Marquess of Queensberry Rules

The 18th and 19th centuries saw a succession of rule sets, as boxers and sponsors tried to limit deaths in the ring while preserving the enjoyment of the crowd. However, the one that eventually stuck was the Marquess of Queensbury Rules, named after its aristocratic endorser but written by an athlete named John Graham Chambers. Building on previous codifications of the sport, these rules set the size of the ring, the duration of rounds and breaks, the circumstances under which a boxer should be considered "down", and - strikingly - that "the gloves [were] to be fair-sized boxing gloves of the best quality and new." This was the first mention of boxing gloves in a set of boxing rules. That spark of inspiration - whether it represented a brand-new idea or acceptance of an existing trend - changed the sport tremendously. With their hands protected, boxers could strike with more force - but they could also now use their hands defensively. Bare-knuckle boxers tended to lean backwards; gloved boxers' natural stance is with their backs relatively straight and their hands held up in front of their faces.

Answer: He collapsed and died.

Modern marathon runners have it easy! Before his final jog across some 42 kilometres (26 miles) of mountainous terrain, the legendary Pheidippides ran 246 km (153 mi) in less than two days to solicit help from Sparta -- and then reported to Marathon to fight the Persians there. No wonder it was all too much!

In the planning of the first modern Olympics, held in 1896 in Athens, organizers looked to Pheidippides' legend to add a touch of grandeur to the games. It was Michel Bréal who had that spark of inspiration, and the definitive endurance run was born. Today, marathons are popular among women and men, professional athletes and recreational runners. The best can cover the distance in a little over two hours!