How Fast Did They Go? Trivia Quiz

Julia Taubitz of Germany won the women's singles luge with an average speed of 87.4 km/h across four runs down the 1,278 meter track. In luge the men's track was 200 meters longer than the women's track which meant that Julia's time was about a half second faster than the men's winning time. Luge has the fastest speeds among all Olympic sports ahead of the other sliding sports of bobsleigh and skeleton.

Francesca Lollobrigida of hosts Italy won the 5,000m speed skating event with an average speed of 44.3 km/h. While men had a 10,000m event, 5,000m was the longest speed skating event for women. Lollobrigida also won the second longest event, the 3,000m which took place on her 35th birthday. Her great aunt was actress Gina Lollobrigida.

Kristen Faulkner of the USA won the Women's Road Race with an average speed of 39.5 km/h over the 157.6km course. The women's course was over 100km shorter than the men's but still took almost 4 hours to complete. The cycling races had the fastest average speed among all races in the Summer Olympics.

Cassandre Beaugrand of host France won the women's Triathlon with an average speed of 26.9 km/h over the 51.5km course. Because of the mixture of swimming, cycling, and running the average speed was significantly slower than the cycling road race but faster than the races in the other two sports. Slightly over half the total time for the race was spent cycling which helped increase the average speed.

Ebba Andersson of Sweden won the 50km cross country skiing race with an average speed of 22.0 km/h. She also won silver medals in the 10km freestyle and 20km skiathlon as well as being part of the silver medal winning relay team. In 2026 the women raced the same distances as the men. Prior to these Olympics the women's distance event was only 30km.

It alternates every Olympics between classical style and freestyle so in 2022 they race freestyle and in 2018 it was classical.

Julia Simon of France won the 15km individual in biathlon with an average speed of 21.8 km/h. This included a one minute penalty for a missed shot at the shooting range. Without that missed shot she would have had the same average speed to the nearest tenth of a km/h as Ebba Andersson, the winner of the 50km cross country event.

The two events are similar and it is seen here that stopping to shoot at a target offsets the cross country skiers having to ski over three times as far.

Siffan Hassan of the Netherlands won the women's marathon with an average speed of 17.7 km/h. This was her third medal of these Olympics as she won bronze in both the 5,000m and 10,000m races. She also won gold three years earlier in the Tokyo Olympics as well as a bronze in the 1,500m so she had won a medal at every distance from 1,500m up and a gold at every distance starting with 5,000m.

Yang Jiayu of China won the 20km Walk with an average speed of 14.0 km/h. Even though this was less than half the distance of the marathon, the speed was still 3.7km/h slower which confirmed the expectation that walking is slower than running.

Emily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet of France won the inaugural ski mountaineering mixed relay event with an average speed of 12.6 km/h. Ski mountaineering involved skiing both uphill and downhill as well as several stops for equipment changes so it was expected to be slower than other skiing events.

In addition to the mixed relay event, there were individual men's and women's sprint events. These were much shorter than the mixed relay and involved fewer equipment changes.

Sharon van Rounwedaal of the Netherlands won the 10km Open Water swimming event with an average speed of 4.9 km/h. This is less than half the average speed of the next slowest event on the list even though it was the fourth shortest in distance. Like the men's marathon swim and all of the triathlons, this took place in the Seine river rather than in a controlled indoor environment.