BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 71 of 142

Correct — B, Cricket. Read the negation first: the booklet sets the word 'not' in bold italics, an emphasis that does not survive into plain text, and the question asks which of the four was absent rather than present. The 33rd Olympiad is Paris 2024 — officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, held from 26 July to 11 August 2024, with the opening ceremony staged along the Seine rather than inside a stadium, and with breaking making its Olympic debut. Its programme ran to 32 sports, and cricket was not one of them. Cricket's Olympic history is a single line: it was played once, at the Paris Games of 1900, a men's contest with only two entrants in which Great Britain beat France, and it did not appear again for more than a century. What makes it the tempting wrong answer is that its return had just been announced — the International Olympic Committee approved five additional sports for Los Angeles 2028 in October 2023, about fifteen months before this paper was sat, and cricket was among them, alongside flag football, squash, baseball and softball, and lacrosse. So in the news cycle immediately before the exam, cricket and the Olympics were joined in every headline, which is exactly the association the question exploits. The other three options were all contested at Paris 2024, and each has a long and continuous Olympic record.

• (a)Fencing — One of the few sports present at every modern Olympic Games since Athens 1896, and contested at Paris 2024 with foil, épée and sabre events for men and women, individual and team. It is also a sport with a strong French tradition, which made its place on a Paris programme certain. There is no Games in the modern series from which fencing has been absent.
• (c)Modern Pentathlon — Contested at Paris 2024, and by far the most interesting of the three wrong options, because it was in genuine danger. Invented for the 1912 Games as the soldier's event — fencing, swimming, equestrian show jumping, shooting and running — it was being reconsidered by the IOC after controversy over its riding discipline, and Paris 2024 was the last Games at which the horse-riding leg was contested; obstacle racing replaces it from 2028. Being reconsidered is not the same as removed.
• (d)Triathlon — An Olympic sport since Sydney 2000, and one of the more visible events of Paris 2024 because the swim leg was held in the Seine, whose water quality had been the subject of a long and expensive clean-up and of repeated news coverage during the Games. Both the individual races and the mixed relay were contested.

The Olympic programme is not fixed. Since the reforms of Olympic Agenda 2020 the International Olympic Committee has separated a core list of sports, contested at every Games, from a small number of optional sports proposed by each host city to suit local interest — which is why skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing entered at Tokyo 2020, breaking appeared at Paris 2024, and Los Angeles 2028 will add cricket, flag football, squash, baseball and softball, and lacrosse. Two consequences follow for an examinee. First, a sport's presence has to be attached to a specific Games rather than remembered as a permanent fact. Second, the ordinal number matters: Games are numbered by Olympiad — the four-year period — so Paris 2024 is the XXXIII Olympiad, Tokyo 2020 the XXXII and Los Angeles 2028 will be the XXXIV. The numbering counts Olympiads even when the Games themselves were cancelled during the two World Wars, which is why the number and the count of celebrated Games do not match.

Sort the four sports by how long each has been Olympic, and the answer appears without any Paris-specific knowledge. Fencing goes back to 1896, modern pentathlon to 1912, triathlon to 2000 — all continuous — while cricket has one appearance, in 1900. A sport that has been absent for over a century is overwhelmingly the likelier answer to 'which was not included'. The reason the question is not trivial for an Indian candidate is the recency effect: the IOC's decision of October 2023 to bring cricket back for 2028 was major news in India, and a candidate who half-remembers the headline may convert 'cricket is coming to the Olympics' into 'cricket was at the Olympics'. Distinguish the two dates deliberately — approved in 2023, to be played in 2028, absent in 2024. And read the negation. On this paper the words 'not' and 'except' are emphasised in the printed booklet but appear plain in any reproduction of the text, so the safeguard has to be your own habit of re-reading the stem before choosing.

• The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad — Paris 2024 — were held from 26 July to 11 August 2024, with 32 sports on the programme and breaking making its Olympic debut.
• Cricket has appeared at the Olympics exactly once, at Paris 1900, a men's match with two entrants won by Great Britain over France.
• The IOC approved five additional sports for Los Angeles 2028 in October 2023 — cricket, flag football, squash, baseball and softball, and lacrosse; cricket returns as six-team men's and women's Twenty20 tournaments.
• Fencing has been contested at every modern Olympic Games since 1896; triathlon has been Olympic since Sydney 2000, and at Paris 2024 its swim leg was held in the Seine.
• Modern pentathlon, introduced in 1912, was contested at Paris 2024 for the last time with equestrian show jumping among its five disciplines; obstacle racing replaces riding from 2028.

• Missing the negation. The stem asks which sport was NOT included, and the booklet's bold-italic emphasis on that word disappears in plain text.
• Confusing the announcement with the event. Cricket's inclusion was approved in October 2023 for the 2028 Games; it was not played in 2024.
• Assuming modern pentathlon had already been dropped. It was being reconsidered by the IOC and lost its riding discipline after Paris 2024, but it was contested there.

BPSC asks sport as a current-affairs item pinned to one edition of an event, often by its ordinal — the 33rd Olympic, not Paris 2024 — so the candidate has to convert the number before answering, and it likes the negative form. It also uses sports pair-matching, as the 69th CCE did with tennis venues and trophies. UPSC rarely asks sport at all, and when it did so in the past it asked which city was to host a named Games.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Cricket is scheduled to return to the Olympic programme at which Games ?

  • (a)Paris 2024
  • (b)Los Angeles 2028
  • (c)Brisbane 2032
  • (d)Tokyo 2020

  Answer(b) Los Angeles 2028 — approved by the IOC in October 2023 as one of five additional sports, and to be played as six-team men's and women's Twenty20 tournaments. Its only previous Olympic appearance was at Paris 1900.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which sport made its Olympic debut at the Paris 2024 Games ?

  • (a)Surfing
  • (b)Sport climbing
  • (c)Breaking
  • (d)Skateboarding

  Answer(c) Breaking — surfing, sport climbing and skateboarding had all debuted earlier, at Tokyo 2020, and were retained in Paris.