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Question 221 of 325 · Sports
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Women participants were formally admitted to the Olympic Games for the first time in:

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Answer: Option B — 1900 (Paris)

Detailed Solution

Women competed in the Olympic Games for the first time at the 1900 Paris Olympics. Of about 1,000 athletes, 22 were women.

Women at the 1900 Olympics:

  • They competed in five sports: tennis, golf, sailing, croquet and equestrian events.
  • Charlotte Cooper of Great Britain won the women's singles tennis event and became the first woman to win an Olympic title (and the first individual female Olympic champion).
  • Hélène de Pourtalès of Switzerland, a member of a winning sailing crew, is regarded by some historians as the first woman to win an Olympic event, a few weeks earlier.

At the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, no women were allowed to compete. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, opposed women's participation.

Milestones for women in the Olympics:

  • 1912: women's swimming events were included.
  • 1928 Amsterdam: women's athletics and gymnastics were introduced.
  • 1984 Los Angeles: the women's marathon was included for the first time.
  • 2012 London: for the first time, every participating country sent at least one female athlete, and women's boxing was included, making it the first Games in which women competed in every sport on the programme.
  • 2024 Paris: the first Olympics with full gender parity, with equal numbers of places for men and women.

Indian women at the Olympics:

  • Nilima Ghose (athletics) and Mary D'Souza were the first Indian women to compete at the Olympics, at Helsinki in 1952.
  • Karnam Malleswari became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal (bronze in weightlifting, 2000 Sydney).
  • V. Sindhu became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic silver medal (badminton, 2016 Rio).
  • Manu Bhaker won two bronze medals at Paris 2024, becoming the first Indian to win two medals at a single Games after independence.

Why not the other options?

  • ✗1896 (Athens) had no women competitors.
  • ✗1908 (London) was not the first Olympics with women.
  • ✗1928 (Amsterdam) was when women's athletics was first included.

Quick tip

Remember: Women first competed in the Olympics in 1900 (Paris); first female champion = Charlotte Cooper (tennis); first Indian women Olympians = 1952; first Indian woman medallist = Karnam Malleswari (2000).

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Sports — Preparation

This question tests your understanding of Sports, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.

This topic covers sports GK: major tournaments and their venues, trophies and cups associated with each sport, sports terms, the number of players in a team, sports awards in India, Olympic and Asian Games facts, and famous sportspersons and their achievements. Common questions ask which sport a trophy belongs to (such as the Durand Cup for football or the Ranji Trophy for cricket), which term is used in which sport, and where a tournament was held. Records and results change after every season, so pair static facts such as team sizes and terms with recent results from current affairs. Practise the sports questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.

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