Born in Oklahoma in 1887 to a father who was part Irish and part Sac-Fox Indian and to a mother who was part Indian and part French, Thorpe was an astonishingly talented all-round sportsman. He first came to prominence as an American football running back while at the Carlisle Indian School, a tiny government-run college in Pennsylvania, and was selected as an All-American halfback in both 1911 and 1912.
An outstanding track and field athlete, he was chosen to represent the United States at the Stockholm Olympics of 1912 and duly won gold in the decathlon and pentathlon events, setting world records in both of them and beating all of his opponents by huge margins. He also finished fourth and seventh, respectively, in the open high and long jump competitions.
When handing him a bronze bust for winning the pentathlon, King Gustav V of Sweden said to Thorpe: “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” To which the humble Thorpe is alleged to have replied: “Thanks, King.”
A national hero in his own country, Thorpe was honoured with a ticker-tape parade in New York City upon his return and later remembered: “I heard people yelling my name, and I couldn’t realize how one fellow could have so many friends.”
But his world was turned upside down in January 1913, just six months after his stellar achievements in Sweden. The Worcester Telegram of Massachusetts revealed that Thorpe had, in 1909 and 1910, earned some $15 a week playing minor league baseball in North Carolina. Many college players, in fact, spent summers playing professionally, but most of them played under aliases - unlike Thorpe, who was deemed to have been a professional athlete and therefore ineligible to compete in the Olympics.
Thorpe wrote to James E Sullivan, the chairman of the Amateur Athletic Union, admitting what he had done, but pleading for leniency. “I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things,” Thorpe wrote. “In fact, I did not know that I was doing wrong because I was doing what I knew several other college men had done, except that they did not use their own names. I have received offers amounting to thousands of dollars since my victories last summer, but I have turned them all down because I did not care to make money from my athletic skill.”
Shamefully, there was no leniency from the AAU and the American Olympic Committee, who apologised to the International Olympic Committee for having allowed Thorpe to compete in Stockholm. Despite a welter of sympathy from the American public at large, his name was expunged from the record books and he was forced to return his medals and trophies.
Thorpe went on to enjoy a successful career in American football and major league baseball before drifting from job to job and suffering increasingly from alcohol problems. Virtually penniless, he died of a heart attack in his trailer home in California on March 28, 1953.
The campaign to reinstate Thorpe’s medals and records commenced in 1914, but met with no success in his lifetime. With regard to the 1912 Olympics, the AAU posthumously restored his amateur status in 1973, but the IOC obstinately refused to pardon him.
“Ignorance is no excuse,” said Avery Brundage, who was president of the IOC between 1952 and 1972 and viewed in some quarters as a stubborn bigot. Make of it what you will, but Brundage, an American, had also competed in the pentathlon and decathlon events at the Stockholm Olympics of 1912, finishing sixth in the former and a lowly fourteenth in the latter.
It was only in October 1982 that the IOC, under the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch, lifted the ban against Thorpe and allowed his name to be rightly returned to the record books. In January 1983, almost 30 years after his death, Jim Thorpe’s family were at last presented with replica Olympic gold medals. The honour of Wa-tho-huck - or “Bright Path”, as Thorpe’s Indian name translated - had finally been restored.
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