Sports
Swimming & Water Sports Quiz
Michael Phelps, surfing, and everything in the water — the ultimate aquatic sports quiz.
Michael Phelps, surfing, and everything in the water — the ultimate aquatic sports quiz.
Michael Phelps won 23 Olympic gold medals — more than 66 entire countries have won in their combined Olympic history. This quiz covers 50 questions on swimming, surfing, diving, water polo, and the aquatic sports that captivate billions.
You'll explore competitive swimming from strokes to world records, the controversy of fast suits that broke 43 records in a single championship, surfing's Polynesian origins and modern big-wave culture, diving's precision scoring, and how the 100-meter freestyle time has dropped from over a minute to under 47 seconds.
Michael Phelps holds the all-time record with 28 Olympic medals (23 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze), earned across five Olympic Games from 2000 to 2016. His 23 gold medals alone are more than most countries have won in total.
Freestyle (front crawl) is the fastest competitive swimming stroke. The world record for 50m freestyle is under 21 seconds. Butterfly is the second fastest, followed by backstroke, with breaststroke being the slowest of the four competitive strokes.
The record for the largest wave ever surfed is held at Nazaré, Portugal, where waves generated by an underwater canyon can reach extraordinary heights. German surfer Sebastian Steudtner rode an approximately 26-meter (86-foot) wave there in 2020.
Last updated: March 2026