Jim Thorpe Was an All-Time Great Olympian Who Was Stripped of Two Gold Medals

Aug. 30 2022, Published 10:11 a.m. ET

Few athletes construct the kind of legacy that Jim Thorpe established over the course of his long athletic career. Jim used to be an exceptionally flexible athlete, and in 1912, he traveled to Stockholm for the Olympic Games being held there. He received two gold medals within the games: one for the pentathlon, and any other for the decathlon, right away marking him as one of the most great Olympians of all time.

Why did Jim Thorpe lose his medals?

After the 1912 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made the verdict to strip Jim of his medals, claiming that he had violated the amateurism regulations that existed around the games at the moment. The determination got here down in 1913 and was once in response to two seasons of semi-professional baseball that Jim had performed previous to competing within the Olympics.

At the time, the Olympics had rules in place which failed to allow non-amateurs to compete in the Olympics. If you had been in the future paid for your recreation, you have been not allowed to compete. Those laws had been eventually scrapped, and now, a wide variety of professional athletes compete within the Olympic Games in the whole thing from basketball to trace and box.

Jim Thorpe's medals were not totally restored till 2022.

In 1983, the IOC dominated that Jim's medals might be restored after pointing out that the preliminary ruling had fallen out of doors of the 30-day window when those choices had been intended to be made. The restoration came 30 years after Jim's death, and it best indexed him as a co-victor in each occasions. It wasn't till 2022 that the IOC totally restored Jim as the sole champion in both the decathlon and pentathlon.

Jim had a lengthy athletic career after the Olympics.

Jim, who grew up in Oklahoma and was of Native American descent, had a lengthy career in official sports even after he was once stripped of his Olympic medals. He played six seasons of baseball for the New York Giants and in addition performed for six separate groups within the earliest version of the NFL. He was once additionally an outstanding basketball player and joined a staff composed totally of Native Americans.

Jim performed respectable sports activities until the age of 41 after which labored several ordinary jobs after that. He had alcoholism and spent the overall years of his existence in declining health.

Jim's lengthy legacy remains to be remembered by the public. The Associated Press named him the greatest athlete of the primary part of the 20th century, and he was once additionally inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in their inaugural elegance, which was once in 1963, 10 years after his demise.

As is steadily the case, the IOC was once beautiful gradual to acknowledge the error that they'd made in taking away Jim's medals. He will have technically violated the principles, however those regulations were all the time foolish, and the move at all times seemed like it came a minimum of a little bit out of spite. Jim Thorpe was an all-time great, and now the IOC has in any case said it.

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