One of history’s greatest athletes and the victim of what many considered an age-old Olympic injustice, Jim Thorpe has recovered as the sole winner of the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Games.
Thorpe, who excelled at a dozen or more sports, had dominated his two events at the 1912 Stockholm Games, but was stripped of his medals after it was revealed that he had earned a few dollars before his Olympic career playing professional baseball for a short time. American officials, in what historians have seen as a mixture of racism against Thorpe, who was a Native American, and a fanatical commitment to the idea of amateurism, were among the loudest supporters of his disqualification.
Thorpe’s recognition by the International Olympic Committee, announced on Friday, comes 40 years after it declared him co-winner of both events. But the 1982 restoration wasn’t enough for its supporters, who campaigned on behalf of Thorpe, an American icon especially revered in Native American communities.
The athletes who were declared champions by the IOC after Thorpe’s disqualification – Hugo Wieslander, a Swede who finished second in the decathlon, and Ferdinand Bie from Norway, who finished behind Thorpe in the pentathlon – showed great reluctance to take their gold medal. medals after Thorpe was robbed of his victories in 1913. The IOC said it consulted the Olympic committees of Sweden and Norway and Wieslander’s surviving relatives before Thorpe recovered as the sole champion of both events.
Bie and Wieslander will now be co-silver medalists of their events. The current silver and bronze medalists will not be relegated.
“This is a very exceptional and unique situation,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “It is being addressed by an extraordinary gesture of fair play from the concerned National Olympic Committees.”
Responding to a request for comment, the Swedish Olympic Committee said: “SOC would like to quote Sweden’s King Gustav V, who said to Jim Thorpe during the medal ceremony: ‘Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.'” The Norwegian Olympic Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision to name Thorpe the sole winner of the decathlon and pentathlon was reported on Thursday by Indian Country Today, which noted that Olympic officials had quietly only put him in first place on the Games’ official website.
Restoring Thorpe’s medals has long been a motivation for Native American and other activists, who in recent years had revamped petitions and lobbied the IOC for a change. Thorpe was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma and attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, and his multi-sport achievements are legendary in Native American circles.
“This is a time to celebrate — of Jim Thorpe’s Olympic achievements in 1912, and of their full recognition by the International Olympic Committee today,” said Nedra Darling, a citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation whose father was an old friend of Thorpe was. “It’s been a long journey to this moment, but a very important one for those of us in the Bright Path Strong movement and across the Indian country.”
Bright Path Strong, a foundation named after Thorpe’s native name, was one of the leaders in efforts to restore Thorpe’s status.
“We welcome the fact that a solution could be found thanks to the hard work of Bright Path Strong,” said Bach.
Thorpe’s achievements on the football field were legendary: In 1911, Carlisle upset Harvard, thanks in large part to Thorpe, who played halfback and also kicked four field goals.
Thorpe attended the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm to compete in the decathlon and another now-defunct track competition, the pentathlon. He won both, received international acclaim and participated in a tickertape parade for Olympic stars on Broadway in New York. The Times reported that Thorpe received the most acclaim, alongside Pat McDonald, a shot putter who was a traffic police officer in Times Square.
But the following year, it turned out that a few years earlier, Thorpe had been making $25 a week playing minor league baseball. Under the strict amateur rules of the time, he was stripped of his gold medals.
His amateur status was revoked and Thorpe began a major-league baseball career, playing outfield for the New York Giants, Cincinnati Reds, and Boston Braves from 1913 to 1919. Remarkably, he switched to professional football in 1920 and played with six teams, including the New York Giants, until he was 41. He is a member of both the college and professional football Halls of Fame. In 1950, he was chosen as the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century in an Associated Press poll of sportswriters.
Thorpe died in 1953. His DailyExpertNews obituary called him “probably the greatest natural athlete the world had seen in modern times.”