Quiz tips 2021
1)Remember those dear old pre Covid days when all we had to worry about was Storm Ciara raging up the Firth of Forth. England and Scotland played an error strewn game ,unsurprising in view of the conditions. Only in the 70th minute of a dour struggle did England score the only try of the game. Given a decent day at Twickenham ,odds must surely be on a more free scoring game.
2) The Super Bowl is a match between the champions of the NFC and the AFC so it’s a 50/50 choice. The regular season is close to a finish and the play off line up largely decided. The holders, NFC’s Kansas City Chiefs ,are through in sparkling form with the AFC main hopes resting on two traditional teams from rust belt states, the Packers and the Buffalo Bills.
3) The Cheltenham Gold Cup, such an important part of British life that Boris(allegedly) did his old mate Dido a favour and postponed lockdown for a week so the 2020 race could go ahead. The winner for the second year in a row was the favourite Al Boum Photo, trained in Ireland as were six of the other eleven runners. In the last ten years, there have been five winners trained in England, five in Ireland. You might just find a horse trained in France or Wales to carry your OTHER hopes but that would be a longshot. The biggest gamble will be whether the Irish feel like coming in such numbers by March. Like so much in 2020,the big question-when does the jab restore normality?
4) Both the 2020 top try scorer and the top points scorer were French. France only lost out on the Championship because of points difference. The French scored more points than England but conceded many more, most hurtfully 22 to struggling Italy. You will need a goal kicker on your side who plays all five games and takes both long and short penalties. Un botteur francais, a mon avis!
5) France and England finished the 2020 Six Nations tied, separated only by different performances against Italy. France had beaten England in Paris, France were overturned in Edinburgh by the Scots. On 13/3/21,the crunch game may again be the England France game. In 2021,this will see home advantage for England but how close December’s Autumn Nations Cup Final, also at Twickenham. It took 16 minutes of extra time to sort out an English victory. The Irish, the Welsh, even the Scots may have hopes but the Championship seems likely to be decided on the 13th March.
6)National Hunt horses tend to be at their peak aged eight or nine, providing eight of the last ten winners of the Cheltenham Gold Cup(the other two were younger.)Grand National winners have tended to be older (whisper it, class horses on the slide.) Four of the last ten have been ten or eleven. Three have been nine, including the 2019 winner Tiger Roll, winning for the second year in a row. It’s certain that you’ll have more nine-year olds running for you than any other age group. Two of the last four have been eight; comparative youngsters. Maybe a new trend is emerging. Not since the Second World War has a horse younger than eight won the race.
7)Though the racing eights of Oxford and Cambridge women have rowed against each other since 1935(Cambridge 44 Oxford 30), only in 2015 did they row on the same day and over the same course as the men, a move described by Beeb’s Eleanor Oldroyd as “a game changer”. In 2019, Cambridge won their third race in a row, part of a second consecutive whitewash for the four Cambridge boats. Though the Cambridge crew were less experienced than Oxford, the nine were overall heavier and taller, often significant in rowing. The five-length margin of victory will hard to overturn in 2021.
8) There are fewer players, more seniors, and more amateurs in the Masters than in the other slams. The tough course, the slick greens bring even the form players back to earth at some stage of the weekend so most Masters are still wide open coming down the 72nd hole. In the last ten years, there have been three play offs. No need for extra holes in 2020;Dustin Johnson broke the tournament record with a twenty under par score and won by five shots, the biggest winning margin for 23 years.
9) There are nine players who have won the World Snooker title still active on the tournament circuit. Thirty-two players come to the Crucible in April so you’ll have at least 23 shots at a first time winner. In the last ten Championships, there have been three first time Champions, including the 2019 winner, Judd Trump. We keep hearing that this is now a young man’s game. In 2020 though the title went back to Ronnie ,the doyen of snooker’s Class of 92, the year when O’Sullivan, Higgins and Williams turned professional.”No Country for Old Men.”?Too soon to say.
10)This question was set by the village idiot at Quiz HQ who lives in Lincoln but has just celebrated 50 years as an Ipswich supporter. Back in November, the two sides were battling away at the head of Division One. Since then, Ipswich’s form has deteriorated and as of 29/12 they are 6 points behind League leaders Lincoln. Worse, Ipswich have had Covid in the camp. Several games have been postponed. In a season where the teams were already due to play twice a week or more, it may be hard to catch up on tired legs. Hope and Ipswich; two words rarely found in the same sentence.
11) An astonishing 86,000 spectators turned up at Wembley to see England play Germany at soccer. Why astonishing? Because it was a women’s match. Before Team GB’s adventures at London 2012, the players were used to crowds of a few hundred at best. The profile was raised and there were huge TV audiences for the 2019 World Cup. The Women’s Super League provides the end of season question. There are 12 teams in the league, nine attached to Premiership sides, using their training facilities, often using their grounds. The season is 22 matches so perhaps less opportunity for any side to establish a big winning margin. In 30/12/20,Manchester United are unbeaten and four points clear of Arsenal. Chelsea, six points back, have two games in hand.
12) No use expecting a shock winner in the modern F. A. Cup. Chelsea, Arsenal and the two Manchesters have won eleven of the last twelve, even though they often play with understrength teams in early rounds. Only 2013 Wigan have triumphed for the underdogs. Four have won by a single goal and four with a 2-1 score line. Two have seen goals scored in extra time but remember this prediction is based only on the first 90 minutes. Arsenal won 4-0 in 2015 and won again in 2020,the winning margin for the fifth time in a decade was 2-1.
13) Liverpool’s win in the 2019 Champion’s League was England’s 13th, edging them into second place ahead of Italy, but still five adrift of the Spanish record. There are six nations still in with a chance. Germany have four teams including the 2020 holders, Bayern. The four Spanish all had a chequered run through the group stages but can’t be written off. England and Italy have three teams each left, Portugal and France have one each. If the continentals have had anything like the gruelling shortened English domestic season ,there will be tired legs in the Final.
14)In 2019,Holly Doyle broke the record number of winners ridden by a female jockey with 116 wins. Still she might have been a tricky question in a pub quiz. By December 2020,Holly was coming third in the BBC SPOTY with nationwide celebrity. Why? Holly had ridden a winner at Royal Ascot; she had ridden five winners in a day at Windsor; she had ridden in big American and Australian races and come fourth in the jockeys’ Championship. Surely she will have a ride in the Derby, perhaps even aboard one of the favourites.
15) Three British women players made the second round at Wimbledon 2019 and unsurprisingly the same three, Johanna Konta, Heather Watson and Harriet Dart, ended the year as Britain’s top ranked players. All three had disappointing pandemic seasons and are unlikely to be seeded. Anybody else will have to rely on wildcards or the qualifying tournament. Some promising players, the Katies Swan and Boulter, Naomi Broady have had bad runs of injury. The table is fairly bare.
16) There have been fifty three Wimbledon Men’s Finals in the Open Era. Intuitively you’d expect that with the two best players of the fortnight playing for the highest stakes, the matches would be tight. In fact, 24 have been won in straight sets. Only 19 have gone the distance though these are the ones you remember on winter nights, like the epic 2019 match between Djokovic and Fed, the greatest of all time. The outsider of your three options is a four-set match.
17) England will face three opponents in Group D. One is the Czech Republic who beat us in qualifying; one is Croatia who beat us in the 2018 World Cup Finals and the third is recently resurgent Scotland so the group might have been easier. England could still get to the knockout if they finished third in the group, perhaps by beating an as yet unknown third nation. Oh come on, you pessimists, England are playing all three matches at Wembley.
18) This is the sixteenth European Championship and for the first time, the matches have been shared out between 12 cities in 12 different countries. None of the 12 countries will have an automatic qualification; all 24 nations in the final draw will have to qualify on the pitch. England will have some home advantage if they get to the later stages; the semis and the Final will be held at Wembley. Some interesting travel plans for spectators; one group will be split between Rome and Baku. (Azerbaijan will not qualify-the corrupting slosh oil money produces strange venues)
19) What an odd question this would have been a decade ago when British ambition was limited to counting Cav’s sprint wins. That all changed in 2012 with Wiggo’s win and the murky rise of Team Sky. Team Sky is now history and its successor INEOS is much more focussed on foreign riders. Thomas and Froome were left out of the 2020 squad and there were no British sprinters to challenge in bunch finishes. There were no British stage wins. Any hope for 2021?Some came in Italy where the Giro was won by a Brit ,Geoghegan Hart, and in Spain where a young Brit finished on the podium.
20) The Tour de France combines several races. To contend for the yellow jersey, you need to be on your game for every stage. A crosswind on the flattest stage can split the field, a puncture or crash five miles from the line might only cost a minute but your dream would be over. To contend for the green, you need to be in contention on lots of stages but on tough days, you can pedal in with the broom wagon and take a rest. Peter Sagan, perennial green jersey, sometimes pulls wheelies and wave as he got to the top of the mountain half an hour in arrears. What does he care? He keeps fresh for the next day. To contend for King of the Mountains, you need to be seriously good at uphill and almost as important, downhill but you don’t have to win the biggest climbs if you have hoovered up enough points on the intermediate climbs. In 2020 though, the battle for yellow was so fierce between two Slovenians that the top two in the GC finished in top places for the polka dot.
21)What a 2020 F1 season Hamilton had! Eleven wins in seventeen races and all the all time Schumacher records broken. Even for me, a F1aphobe, his SPOTY win and his knighthood were just reward for the excellence of his driving, even if in a demonstrably superior car. At last, the spoiled superstar had taken on responsibility as a role model. Now the F1 season stretches into mid December, we come to Silverstone in July for our 2021 F1 question. Hamilton has won the British Grand Prix seven times. His Mercedes team won the constructors championship in a canter; his team mate Bottas won two of the six races Hamilton did not win in 2020.A 1-2 for Mercedes looks a formality but you never know what problems might crop up in the race.
OLYMPICS
22) Nicola Adams, G.B.’s double Olympic gold medal winner, has retired from boxing after suffering an eye injury and was equally unlucky in Strictly. Nicola had star quality; warmth rare in a sport where conflict is the name of the game. Nicola was one of two Europeans to win Rio boxing gold; the other was won by an American. Now there will be five golds to fight for; there will 100 women competing, triple the Rio number and so a major boost to gender equality. Fitting tribute if GB can find a worthy successor to history maker Nicola.
23)The six women’s Olympic soccer tournaments since the first at Atlanta have seen one win for Norway, one win for Germany, the Rio and reigning champions and four for the USA.USA will surely be the favourites after their performance at the 2019 World Championships. Japan looked to have a stylish young team in France and will have home advantage. There will be only twelve teams and GB, surely largely based on the English squad, have already qualified but the England team who will provide maybe nine of the team are stuttering after heady nights in France.
24) The Olympic motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius; for those not as clever as Jacob Rees-Mug, faster, higher, stronger. I have reservations about sport where the judging is subjective as in gymnastics but I have no doubts about the supreme skills of Simone Biles. Simone won four gold medals in Rio and topped that with five at the 2019 World Championships. Hard to see Simone leaving Tokyo empty handed. Mind you, she could only finish fourth in Dancing with The Stars, Yankee for Strictly. Ah, that subjective judging from Bruno.
25) In Rio, there were only two triathlon events. The Brownlee brothers won gold and silver, Vicky Holland the women’s bronze. Now there is also a mixed relay event, with shorter legs in the swimming, cycling and running disciplines. This will play well for the sprint specialists, rather than the endurance needed in the individual events. The Brownlees have slipped down the rankings with Jon at 12, Alistair in the 100s.Perhaps GB has more chance in the women’s event with four ranked in the top twelve. GB is ranked fifth in the mixed. Surely, we should be realistic about British prospects.
26) After years of cheering at semi-final placings, the occasional plucky finalist in an outside lane, there is at last a British sprinter of true world class. Since her 2014 gold in the World Junior 100m, it’s been clear that Dina Asher Smith is a huge prospect, the first British woman to run a legal 100m time under 11 seconds. Her performances in Doha were stellar, silvers in the 100m individual and relay, gold by a wide margin in the 200m.Our question is only about Dina in the 200m.Can she hold off the American and Caribbean sprinters snapping at her heels?
27)The great hope of British heptathlon since Jessica Ennis retired has been Katerina Johnson Thompson.KJT is perhaps more talented than the 2012 Olympic champion but prone to one bad event in each competition. In 2018, KJT went to work with a French coach, won Commonwealth Gold by a street and followed up with a commanding gold medal performance in 2019 World Championship with the reigning Olympic champion trailing in her wake. It can still go pear shaped in any of the seven events with KJT particularly vulnerable in the two throws.
28) Remember when the GB relay teams were a joke, dropping batons, stepping out of lanes and generally underperforming. At London 2017, we saw the results of training for the relays rather than putting our four fastest runners together and hoping for the best. The highlight was gold in the men’s 4×100.The women took silver behind USA in both relays. Even the men’s 4×400 took bronze. There was a return to farce in the 2019 World Championship when the 4 x 400 men dropped the baton. The two 4×100 teams made up for that with two brilliant slick medal winning team performances. In Tokyo there will be a new relay, a mixed 4×400.Who will choose to put out their best athletes for an extra race? On which relay legs will the women run? Intriguing.
29)As with most track events over 800m, the steeplechase is dominated by East African athletes-so much so that countries hungry for athletic success offer passports to run under a flag of convenience. One such runner was the Rio winner, Ruth Jebet, a Kenyan spotted at the age of 16 by the oil state of Bahrain. She will still be only 23 in Tokyo. In Rio, six of the top ten were born outside Africa, including the bronze medallist. A clean sweep is not a given.
30) There are ten golds available-5 for men, 4 for women and 1 mixed. Great Britain topped the 2016 medal table of 68 nations with two golds and a silver. There are no changes to the ten classes though this time there will be an equal number of women sailors involved, another nod to the gender gap. The event returns to the same island as the 1964 Olympics with long sandy beaches and the Japanese hospitality evident at the Rugby World Cup. Certainly the spectators will have a great time; will TV have discovered a way to make sailing a more compelling spectacle on the goggle box?
31)2016 saw the debut of Rugby Sevens at the Olympics, 92 years after the last Rugby gold medal. The GB men’s team made the final but were crushed by Fiji 43-7. The women’s team cruised to the semis unbeaten, then lost to New Zealand. Worse; they lost the bronze medal to a Canadian team they had comfortably beaten in the group stages. Both genders have qualified already to be among the twelve teams in their events. You won’t recognize any names from the recent World Cup as sevens is now such a specialist version of the game; there will be players from England, Scotland and Wales in the GB team but not Ulster. Sorry Arlene, they would play for Ireland.
32) The Women’s British Open is one of the four Majors in women’s professional golf. The 2020 version was won by a German, Sophia Popov, but this may be misleading on European prospects as the pandemic restricted international travel. Georgia Hull in 2018 was the only other European winner in the last ten years. Six of the ten winners have been Asian, the real powerhouse in modern golf(12 of the world ranked top twenty). If you think an Asian will win again, choose OTHER.
33)Because of the pandemic, there was no County Championship in 2020 for the first time since the War. Essex, the 2019 champions won its replacement, the Bob Willis Trophy. The successful Willis format has been adopted for the 2021 Championship so for the first time this century all 18 first class counties set off in April with hopes of the Championship. For those seeking innovation, Gloucestershire, Northants and Somerset have never won. For those going the oft trodden path, Yorkshire have won 33 times and Surrey 20.
34) T20 Finals day in pre Covid days was a fixture in the Snedden diary, perhaps a chance to catch up with the quizzing Pharo-Tomlins, rock legend Tom Melia or a passing cub reporter. In 2021 this epic September day of three matches and the mascot race will not even be the rowdiest, most vulgar day of the cricket season. Stand by for The Hundred which fans of county cricket regard with loathing. Once again this supposedly traditional fuddy duddy sport is set for revolution with big bucks behind a plot to make cricket a big city franchise game. Notts won in 2020 in an empty stadium. On a chilly October evening, perhaps all those ecstatic fans were glad to be at home in front of the TV.
35) 2021 sees the 5th staging of the Champions League featuring the top eight darts players in the world. Brits have won twice; the overseas contingent has won twice. World number one Michael Van Gerwen was the only overseas player in the 2019 version and it was the one major trophy missing from his cabinet. MVG put that omission right in some style and is always the favourite in any tournament where he goes to the oche. This though is a format that often produces surprises and Welshman Gerwyn Price or rising star Van Der Bergh from Belgium will fancy their chances.
36) Only three of the 12 Europeans playing in the 2018 Ryder Cup played in all five of the weekend’s matches, including Molinari, the Italian who won all five. Your choice will have to be a favourite with skip Padraig Harrington. Qualifying is not over till September but you can be fairly certain that half the winning team will be back, perhaps as captain’s picks.
37) As always the USA should be the favourites. Almost certainly the 12 Americans will overall be higher ranked than their European counterparts. Home advantage on the Whistling Straits course in Wisconsin will be important. Europe won handsomely in Paris in 2018 partly because of wildly partisan crowds. The last time Europe won away was in 2012;the last time USA won away was in 1993.Home, sweet home!
38) The AFL was until 1990 made up of clubs based only in Victoria. Now the AFL consists of 18 teams spread over 5 of the six states(no Tasmania).Ten, the majority ,are still based in Victoria. NSW, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia have two teams each. Victoria will often be your default choice and in 2020 a Victorian choice paid off, leaving our Down Under correspondents disappointed after a 2018 win for a Perth side, their new home town. How they must miss grey rainy days in Reading!
39) The Grand Final has been Rugby League’s way of deciding its champions since 1998.At the end of the league season, the top eight go into a series of play-offs. I watched a documentary on quantum physics last week. It was easier to understand than the play-off system. The end result is that only four teams, Leeds, Wigan, St Helens and Bradford have won a Grand Final in those twenty years. St Helens are the reigning champions.
40)) The World Series of Baseball is decided by the best of seven games between the champions of the American League and the National League. Nineteen of the thirty major league baseball teams play their home games east of the Mississippi, reflecting the game’s origins in the rust bucket states. If you vote west, the two riverbank sides, St Louis and Minnesota, are on your side-by less than a mile. The 2020 version saw all six games played in neutral Texas. The LA Dodgers from the West coast triumphed 4-2 over Florida’s Tampa Bay Rays.
41)There have been six T20 World Cups and five different winners. Before you reach for your pen and write AUSTRALIA, you may recollect that the Oz have never won(BOO HOO).West Indies, full of T20 superstars who rarely bother with the red ball game, have won twice. The venue will now be in India, who are the bookies’ favourites, where home advantage may be important. Then again the Indian Premier League sees many foreign players who may be quite used to Indian conditions. Patriots will be savouring the fact that England are the current Number One ranked team.
42) For years, the eight top players have turned up in London to play the highest quality tournament of the year. The winner will have played five top ten players in eight days. There are no easy matches. The eight are decided solely on the results of the last twelve months; nobody sends in a fake sick note. Sadly the 2021 edition has moved to Turin and may be harder to find on British television. Fed won’t be there- Djokovic and Raf probably will but it might be worth finding a rising star. Recent winners have included Dimitrov, Tsitsipas and in 2020 Medvedev.
43) The format changed for the Davis Cup in 2019.Instead of playing the Cup over four weekends spaced through the year, with one team playing at home, the other away, the Cup was played in Madrid and completed in one November week. Same again for 2021 Perhaps more of the top names will be encouraged to compete. There will be 18 nations present, divided into six groups of three. In a round robin, there will be two singles instead of four and a doubles match. All games will be played over three sets.
44) At the start of December 2020,Spurs were the answer needed for this question, By Christmas Spurs had slipped to seventh and Jose could again revert to being a grump with someone else taking the blame for dropped points. Week after week in this Covid season, there are results which make you throw the Fantasy form book out the window. Will the form book be any use in December 2021 with crowds back in the stadium?(Yes, they will!) In which case you might scribble down Liverpool or the Manchesters. Southampton, Leicester; anything seems possible right now.
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