Choose the correct option.
(a) Deon Lendore of Trinidad and Tobago died in a car accident in January 2022.
(b) He won a Bronze medal in the London Olympics, 2012.
(c) Deon Lendore was a Chess Player.

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (2), statements (a) and (b). Three statements are printed here, (a) to (c), not four. Statement (a) is correct: Deon Lendore of Trinidad and Tobago died on 10 January 2022 in a car crash in Milam County, Texas, at the age of twenty-nine; according to the authorities his vehicle crossed the centre line on a road there and struck another car head-on. Statement (b) is correct as well: he won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics, in the men's four by four hundred metres relay. The detail is worth having exactly, because relay questions are often set on it. Trinidad and Tobago finished third in the final in two minutes fifty-nine point four zero seconds, a national record, behind the Bahamas, who won in two minutes fifty-six point seven two, and the United States, who took silver in two minutes fifty-seven point zero five; the Trinidadian quartet was Lalonde Gordon, Jarrin Solomon, Ade Alleyne-Forte and Deon Lendore, who ran the anchor leg. It is worth adding, because the misunderstanding is common, that this was a medal won on the day rather than one reallocated years later: the Russian team, which finished fifth in that final, was disqualified after two of its members were banned following the retesting of samples in 2017, but since Russia had not been on the podium no medal changed hands. Statement (c) is false, and it is the statement the whole question turns on. Deon Lendore was not a chess player but a sprinter, a specialist over four hundred metres who competed professionally from 2009 until his death. His record beyond the London relay bronze is substantial: he won The Bowerman, the highest individual honour in American collegiate track and field, in 2014; he took a silver medal in the four by four hundred metres relay at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing; he won bronze medals at the World Indoor Championships in 2016 and 2018; he took relay bronze at the 2019 Pan American Games; and he competed at three Olympic Games, in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Since statements (a) and (b) are correct and statement (c) is not, the answer is option (2).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option accepts statement (a) alone and therefore rejects statement (b), which asserts that Lendore won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics. He did. Trinidad and Tobago finished third in the final of the men's four by four hundred metres relay in a national record of two minutes fifty-nine point four zero seconds, behind the Bahamas and the United States, and Lendore ran the anchor leg for a quartet completed by Lalonde Gordon, Jarrin Solomon and Ade Alleyne-Forte. A candidate hesitating over this statement is most likely thinking of the reallocations of medals that followed the retesting of samples from those Games, and there was indeed a disqualification in this event — the Russian team, which finished fifth, lost its result after two of its members were banned in 2017 — but a team outside the medals loses nothing that could be passed down, so the Trinidadian bronze was neither created nor altered by it. When a statement about an Olympic medal is in doubt, the useful question is whether the medal was won on the day or awarded afterwards, because the two produce different answers to questions about who stood on the podium.  (c) This option accepts statements (a) and (c), and statement (c) is the one falsehood in the list: Deon Lendore was not a chess player. He was a track athlete, a sprinter over four hundred metres, who competed professionally from 2009 until his death in January 2022 and represented Trinidad and Tobago at three Olympic Games, in 2012, 2016 and 2020. The option also has the effect of rejecting statement (b), the Olympic bronze, which compounds the error, and a candidate who takes it has in substance decided that a chess player won a medal in an athletics relay. That is worth noticing as a matter of technique: in a three-statement list the statements often constrain one another, and testing them for internal consistency is a cheap check. If statement (b) says a person won a relay medal at the Olympics and statement (c) says he was a chess player, at most one of them can be true, so the candidate's task narrows immediately to deciding which. Here the medal is a matter of record and the chess claim is simply invented.  (d) This option accepts all three statements and therefore accepts statement (c), the claim that Lendore was a chess player, which is false; he was a sprinter over four hundred metres. The option is a good example of why an all of the above choice should be treated as a claim about every statement at once rather than as a safe harbour. This paper offers such an option ten times among its four hundred options, so it is a routine part of the printing rather than a signal, and it is disproved by any single false statement in the list. There is a further reason to be alert here. The three statements form a natural narrative — a death, a medal, a sport — and a candidate who has verified the first two may accept the third because it completes the picture rather than because it has been tested. Narrative coherence is not evidence. The correct procedure is to evaluate each statement against what is actually known about the person, and what is known about Lendore is a career in track and field: The Bowerman award in 2014, relay silver at the 2015 World Championships, World Indoor bronzes in 2016 and 2018, and Pan American Games bronze in 2019.

Concept: Deon Lendore was a sprinter from Trinidad and Tobago who specialised in the four hundred metres and competed professionally from 2009 until his death. His international breakthrough came at the 2012 London Olympics, where he ran the anchor leg for the Trinidadian four by four hundred metres relay team that finished third in a national record of two minutes fifty-nine point four zero seconds, behind the Bahamas and the United States; his team-mates were Lalonde Gordon, Jarrin Solomon and Ade Alleyne-Forte. He went on to win The Bowerman in 2014, the highest individual award in American collegiate track and field, a silver medal in the relay at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, bronze medals at the World Indoor Championships of 2016 and 2018, and a relay bronze at the 2019 Pan American Games, and he competed at the Olympic Games of 2012, 2016 and 2020. He died on 10 January 2022, aged twenty-nine, when his car crossed the centre line of a road in Milam County, Texas, and collided head-on with another vehicle. One point of Olympic housekeeping attaches to his best-known result and is worth keeping straight, because it is a standing source of confusion in questions about the London Games: many medals from 2012 were reallocated years afterwards when stored samples were retested and athletes disqualified, but the Trinidadian bronze in this relay was not one of them. The Russian team disqualified in this event had finished fifth, outside the medals, so no place on the podium moved.

State PCS 2022 Q80 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q80 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer