Wilson's World: Jim Thorpe Decision Awaits IOC

By Stephen Wilson

More than a century later, full justice is still at stake for one of the greatest athletes of all-time.

Jim Thorpe should be reinstated by the International Olympic Committee as the sole winner – rather than co-champion -- of the pentathlon and decathlon events at the 1912 Stockholm Games, according to IOC vice president Anita DeFrantz.

After Thorpe won both multi-discipline events in dominating fashion, King Gustav V of Sweden presented him with the medals and famously told him: "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world."

But, a few months later, the Native American athlete was stripped of the medals and removed from the record books when it was revealed he had previously played minor league baseball, a violation of the strict amateurism rules of the time.

While the IOC restored Thorpe’s victories and presented replica medals posthumously to his family in 1983, it only recognized him as co-winner of the events, leaving his titles to be shared with the two athletes who had been elevated to first place after his disqualification.

The official results on Olympic.org still list Thorpe as co-champion with Ferdinand Bie of Norway in the pentathlon and Hugo Wielander of Sweden in the decathlon – even though the American defeated both men by overwhelming margins.

DeFrantz wants the IOC to make full amends by crowning Thorpe as the outright champion in both events.

"It’s the right thing to do," DeFrantz, a former Olympic rower and the highest-ranking American on the IOC, said in a telephone interview. "In this time of social reckoning, let’s right this wrong. We can’t change the past but what we can do with better information is to correct it."

DeFrantz wrote an op-ed piece that was published Wednesday in the Washington Post under the headline: "’World’s greatest athlete’ Jim Thorpe was wronged by bigotry. The IOC must correct the record."

She described the disqualification of Thorpe as "one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in sports history’’ and "a stinging episode of early 20th century bigotry."

DeFrantz wrote that the U.S. sports establishment’s treatment of Thorpe at the time "reflected a larger pattern of the nation’s long mistreatment of Native Americans."

DeFrantz took up Thorpe’s cause after being contacted by the advocacy group Bright Path, which has been circulating an online petition calling on the IOC to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner of the 1912 events.

The petition states: "To call Jim Thorpe a co-champion in his events isn’t just inaccurate, it stands as a painful reminder of the deep inequities even the most triumphant athletes of color have faced."

DeFrantz proposed the change in a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach in October and made her case during subsequent executive board meetings. While she had hoped for a decision by the end of 2020, she was told the matter was still being examined by the IOC legal department.

DeFrantz plans to raise the issue again at the next IOC board meeting on Jan. 27. It is uncertain whether Bach and the board have the desire to act on the request, but DeFrantz said she is confident of receiving support.

"Why not?" she said.

Thorpe, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, was born Wa-tho-huck, or Bright Path, on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. He was a legendary all-around sports star at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, excelling in football and track and field.

In Stockholm, Thorpe easily won the pentathlon by finishing first in four of the five events and he set a world record of 8,412 points in the decathlon, beating Wieslander by nearly 700 points. He also finished tied for fourth in the high jump and seventh in the long jump.

Thorpe was hailed as an international star and he and his teammates received a ticker tape parade on Broadway in New York City on their return from Stockholm.

In January 1913, a Massachusetts newspaper -- the Worcester Telegram -- reported that Thorpe had played semi-pro baseball in North Carolina in 1909 and 1910. He received meagre pay of a few dollars a week.

The report led American officials from the Amateur Athletic Union to demand that Thorpe’s amateur status and Olympic victories be revoked. He was retroactively declared a professional and the IOC withdrew his titles, records and trophies.

It was later revealed that the removal of Thorpe as champion should never have been allowed. The Olympic rules in place for the Stockholm Games stated that any protest or claim against an athlete had to be made within 30 days – whereas the reports of his baseball playing days came six months after the Games.

After the Olympics, Thorpe carved out an illustrious career in major league baseball and professional football. He is still considered by many as the best all-around athlete in modern sports history. Thorpe was named the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century by The Associated Press and was inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. He died in 1953 at the age of 64.

Following a campaign by his family and supporters, the IOC approved the restoration of Thorpe’s titles in 1982. In January 1983, commemorative medals were presented to two of Thorpe’s children at a ceremony in Los Angeles.

For Thorpe’s supporters, the move made only partial amends. They won’t rest until the record books show that he was the one and only champion.

Their campaign has taken on added urgency with DeFrantz taking the cause to the top levels of the IOC.

"What I’m trying to do is to correct this,’’ she said in the interview. "The blame is not really on the IOC. The blame is really on the Americans who were involved. It’s been 100 years plus. It’s time to make things right."

The end of the story has yet to be written.

Stephen Wilson is the former longtime Olympics correspondent and European Sports Editor for The Associated Press and former president of the Olympic Journalists Association. Contact him at stevewilson0@gmail.com