In 1912, the Olympics were for gentlemen.
Not athletes—gentlemen. The kind of men who could afford to spend months training without pay, who had family money to cover travelm and who didn’t need a regular job because they had trust funds, estates, or comfortable positions waiting for them after they collected their medals and went home.
The International Olympic Committee, founded by French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin, built this idea into the modern Games from the start. Only amateurs could compete. If you had ever accepted money for playing sports—any sport, at any level—you were a professional. And professionals were banned.
Officially, it was about preserving the “purity” of competition. In reality, it kept poor people out.
Enter Jim Thorpe.
Thorpe didn’t come from money. He was born in 1887 in Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma, to parents of Sac and Fox descent. His Native name was Wa-Tho-Huk—“Bright Path.”
He was sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, one of the infamous boarding schools created to “civilize” Native children by stripping away their language and culture.
Carlisle did have a football program, though. And a track team. And a coach named Pop Warner.
And, Thorpe turned out to be unlike anything anyone had seen.
By 1911, he was being called the best college football player in America. On the track, he was even more. He could sprint, jump, throw, and endure. He didn’t just win events that required different skills; he made specialists look ordinary.
At the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, Thorpe didn’t just win. He overwhelmed the field.
In the pentathlon, he finished first in four of the five events. In the decathlon—ten different events over two days—he beat his nearest competitor by nearly 700 points, a margin so large it wouldn’t be matched for decades.
At one point, his shoes went missing. He found two mismatched shoes in a trash can. One was too big, so he wore an extra sock. He won anyway.
When King Gustav V of Sweden presented him with his medals, he said, “You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world.”
Thorpe, uncomfortable with ceremony, reportedly replied, “Thanks, King.”
Six months later, it was over.
In January 1913, the Worcester Telegram reported that Thorpe had once been paid to play minor-league baseball. The payments were trivial; the violation was technical. But the IOC enforced its rules without mercy.
Many college athletes played summer baseball under fake name, but Thorpe, raised in a school designed to erase his culture and remake him in white America’s image, hadn’t learned the unwritten rules.
The IOC stripped him of his medals and erased his records. The golds were reassigned to Hugo Wieslander of Sweden and Ferdinand Bie of Norway, both of whom publicly protested that Thorpe was the rightful champion.
It didn’t matter.
As for Thorpe, he went on to play professional football and baseball and became one of the first stars of what would become the NFL. But there were no endorsements, no pensions, no safety net. He worked odd jobs, and struggled with both money and alcohol.
Thrope died in 1953 at 64 years old, living in a trailer park in California. His widow had to ask for donations to pay for his funeral.
But, his family never stopped fighting.
In the early 1980s, two researchers, Robert Wheeler and Florence Ridlon, uncovered something the IOC had missed—or perhapsignored. Olympic rules required any protest about eligibility to be filed within 30 days of competition. Thorpe’s disqualification came six months later.
By the IOC’s own rulebook, it was invalid.
With that evidence and support from the U.S. Congress, they pressured the committee. And on January 19, 1983—seventy years after the medals were taken away—the IOC finally reversed course.
That day, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch presented replica gold medals to Thorpe’s children at a ceremony in Los Angeles. The originals were long gone.
A full reckoning wouldn’t come until July 2022, 110 years after Stockholm, when the IOC finally declared Jim Thorpe the sole gold medalist.
Today’s Olympic and college athletes sign multi-million-dollar endorsement deals. The amateur rule that destroyed Thorpe’s career now looks less like a principle and more like a gate.
It preserved competition for people who didn’t need the money. It made sure the Carlisle student who played baseball for $2 a game could be punished for the same thing aristocrats quietly did all the time.
Jim Thorpe was the greatest athlete in the world in 1912. Everyone who saw him knew it. The king knew it. His competitors knew it.
On January 19, 1983, the Olympic Committee finally admitted it.
7 optimistic moments from history this week
Sunday, January 18: "I honestly had no earthly idea that I was breaking hockey's color barrier. I was just there to play hockey." — Willie O'Ree, who this day in 1958 became the first Black player in the NHL, playing for the Boston Bruins.
Monday, January 19: "How do you fly to a place that no one has been to? That's one of the most exciting things about this mission." — Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons, launched this day in 2006 toward Pluto.
Tuesday, January 20: “Passengers could be carried...over a series of descending and ascending longitudinal planes by the gravity momentum acquired by the car in its passage over the planes...thereby obviating all necessity for changing cars on the round trip.” — From L.A. Thompson’s patent for the “Roller Coasting Structure,” granted this day in 1885.
Wednesday, January 21: "The principles advocated in the Daily News will be principles of progress and improvement; of education, civil and religious liberty, and equal legislation." — Charles Dickens, launching his newspaper this day in 1846.
Thursday, January 22: "A proud day for all of us." — First Lady Pat Nixon, christening the first Pan Am 747 "Jumbo Jet" which began commercial service this day in 1970.
Friday, January 23: "By the help of the Most High, it shall be the effort of my life to shed honor on this diploma." — Elizabeth Blackwell, receiving her medical degree this day in 1849, becoming the first woman to graduate from medical school in America. The students had voted to admit her as a joke.
Saturday, January 24: "It's a natural." — American Can Company executive, on introducing the first canned beer this day in 1935, revolutionizing how Americans consumed their favorite beverage.
“Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you are nobody. Always feel that you count, always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.”
– MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
I have known this about Jim Thorpe for years as he was a hero of my late husband who was himself, a pretty good athlete. As I was reading about Elizabeth Blackwell further on, I remembered that one of my late husband’s aunts as the first woman admitted to the UNC School of Medicine. She graduated and practiced medicine in Virginia Beach, Virginia for decades. I can’t begin to imagine what the few women who broke into that bastion of the elite men’s club had to go through in order to graduate. Took a lot of intestinal fortitude I’m certain.
As for the Olympics in general I have to think about the kind of poisonous atmosphere our athletes will be heading into now that this president has turned the country they’ve worked so hard to represent, into the world’s worst nightmare.
Good stuff today Bill.