Friday, August 8, 2008

08:08:08

Today the XXIX Olympics are declared open, with an exceptional opening day ceremony. Some mindblowing fireworks and some splendid performances, which got me all pumped up to come up with this Olympic special, a quiz to check your OQ i.e Olympic Quotient. For the obvious reasons, I decided to put in eight questions (as of now), so here they are and I declare the Quiz Open :) Enjoy!


1. Whats the context:



Hint:




2. The devout Christian that he was, he didnt run the 100m sprint of the 1924 Olympics, his favourite event as the final was on a sunday interfering with the Sabbath, instead he focussed on the 400m event. On the day of 400 metres race came, and as he went to the starting blocks, an American masseur slipped a piece of paper in his hand with a quotation from 1 Samuel 2:30, "Those who honor me I will honor". He ran with that piece of paper in his hand. He not only won the race, but broke the existing world record .
Quite aptly on his epitaph its written : "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary.",lines from the book of Isaiah. Identify the athelete.


3. Connect the two and put the context (All clues in the pics):





4. In the Sydney Olympics each ahelete was given 51 condoms on arrival, another 20,000 were ordered when the supply dwindled, in Athens also similar arrangements were made as well as the Beijing Olympics on a related note...These kind of arrangements lead to some obvious liaisons and some 'Olympic moments',He consider himself a product of one such 'Olympic moment' His mom and dad both represented their countries at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In his own words : "During the hostage standoff, there was a lockdown at the Games Village. No newspapers. No TV. No radio. No leaving the room. Nothing to do. Well almost nothing. So I guess there was me". Identify.


5. Identify them and their immortal contribution to Olympics.






6. That his mother Evelyn Lawler was a former Olympian who competed in Helsinki Olympics in the 80m hurdles; that his sister was a long jumper and held two national records during her prime, becoming a TV broadcaster after retirement; that he was drafted as a wide receiver in the 12th round of the 1984 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys but he did not play; that a formula 1 driver is named after him. These are some of the ascertained facts about whom?


7. If three people made up an exhaustive list, and two of them are the people in the visuals below, who is the third? Explain the context too.






8. Arguably India's best hope for an Olympic gold in an individual event. Identify.






Answers:

1.Quoting wiki:
The movie "Freedom's Fury" was based on the historic "Blood in the water match", water polo match between Hungary and the USSR at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and is arguably the most famous match in water polo history. The name was coined by the media after Hungarian player Ervin Zádor emerged from the pool during the last two minutes in the game with blood pouring from under his eye after being punched by a Soviet player.

The guy in the hint is Mark Spitz (of course), he was the narrator of the movie and coincidentally he was coached by Zador early in his career.

The bleeding face of Zador has been beautifully depicted in the movie poster.



Original movie poster:



2. Eric Liddle, who was one of the two main protagonists of the movie "Chariots of Fire", the other being Harold Abrahams.

3. Yang Tae Young
Paul Hamm

An error from judges denied Young the gold at the 2004 Athens Games, and instead Hamm was declared the winner, after several appeals the case was finally solved in the Court of Arbitration for Sports, which gave the verdict that even though Young was the rightful winner, but the result can't be reversed and so he had to remain content with the bronze.

4. Leander Paes, whose mother Jennifer Paes and father Vece Paes represented India in the Basketball and Hockey resp. at the '72 Munich Games.

5. Theodore Lewald
Carl Diem

They pioneered the trend of Olympic torch relay at the '36 Berlin Olympics, which has continued ever since.

6. Carl Lewis (who else!)

7. The first two people are Laszlo Papp and Teofilo Stevenson so the third guy would be Felix Savon,they are the only three boxers in the history of modern Olympics to win three consecutive boxing gold medals.

8. Henry Rebello, the triple jumper who was highly rated going into the '48 London Games but injury forced him to withdraw in his first attemp itself, and with it India's hopes were dashed to be fulfilled only 60 years later!