Youngest winner of the World Quizzing Championships

The youngest winner of the World Quizzing Championships is Olav Bjortomt (UK, b. 13 December 1978), who was 24 years 205 days old when he won the inaugural event on 5 July 2003. He also won the title in 2015, 2018 and 2019.

The first ever World Quizzing Championships were staged by the International Quizzing Association at Villa Park football stadium (home of Aston Villa) in Birmingham, West Midlands, UK, in 2003. Staged as a written quiz, the event was contested between 50 entrants, although the Championships have grown with each successive year; the 2019 event, for example, drew a field of 2,653 quizzers (and was also won by Bjortomt).

Bjortomt has been a regular on the UK quiz scene since first appearing as a contestant, at the age of 17, on the Channel 4 show Fifteen to One (finished in fifth place). He went on to face questions on University Challenge (quarter-finalist), The National Lottery People’s Quiz (finalist), Are You an Egghead? (knocked out in the second round, twice), Grand Slam (second round), Battle of the Brains, Number One, One-to-Win (finalist), Quizmaster and Mastermind. He is a four-time winner of the European Quizzing Championship (2010, 2014, 2015, 2016) and, in 2016, became the first Quiz Olympiad champion in Athens. This means that as of January 2021, he is youngest ever Olympic, European and World quiz champion.

He has since embarked on a career as a professional question-setter, writing brainteasers for newspapers (The Times' Times2 quiz) and TV game shows, including It’s Not What You Know, University Challenge, Only Connect and The Chase.