Olav Bjortomt
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Olav Bjortomt (born December 13, 1978) is one of the UK's most respected quiz players. He was the winner of the 2003 World Quizzing Championships.[1]
He works for The Times newspaper in London and has set the weekday times2 quiz since July 2005. In 2001 Bjortomt was the joint winner of The Guardian's overall Student Journalist of the Year award. He has a History degree from the University of Nottingham and a Postgraduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism from Nottingham Trent University, and is believed to have won more student journalism awards in one year than anyone ever before.
Time Out describes him as a "former child quiz prodigy and a rising star of the quiz world"[2]. He has appeared on the quiz show Fifteen to One four times, finishing as a series runner-up in 2002. He captained the University of Nottingham team to the quarter-finals in the 1999/2000 series of BBC's University Challenge. When he appeared on the Channel 4 quiz show Grand Slam in 2003, he was described by the commentator James Richardson as the "Wayne Rooney of the quiz world."
In 2007, Olav competed in The National Lottery People's Quiz and was the first contestant to qualify for the grand final, answering 97 per cent of his questions correctly during the show.
He is half Filipino and half Norwegian[citation needed]. He has two younger sisters and a younger brother.