Comic illustration of Jim Thorpe playing football

All illustrations by Chris Danger

Jim Thorpe

He may have been the greatest athlete of all time.

November 21, 2022

The crowd cheered as Jim Thorpe walked toward the king of Sweden. Thorpe, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, was about to accept his second gold medal at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. After shaking Thorpe’s hand, the king is said to have told him, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”

No one could have argued with that claim. Thorpe had dominated his opponents in the decathlon and pentathlon. These track-and-field competitions were two of the most challenging Olympic events.

Thorpe was unlike any athlete in history. In addition to being an Olympic champion, he also played professional football and baseball.

But as a Native American, Thorpe often faced discrimination. And his name would be erased from the Olympic record books for decades. Still, Thorpe kept pushing himself to excel at everything he tried.

“There was no stopping him,” says his grandson John Thorpe.

A Star Is Born

Thorpe was born in 1887 in his family’s one-room cabin in what is now Oklahoma. Starting at age 7, he attended boarding schools run by the U.S. government. At these schools, Native children were forced to give up their cultures, traditions, and languages. Thorpe ran away from his schools several times.

As a teen, Thorpe began attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. There, he became a star on the school’s track-and-field, baseball, and football teams.

Then, in 1912, Thorpe made the U.S. Olympic track-and-field team. The 25-year-old athlete surprised nearly everyone by becoming the first Native American to win a gold medal. In fact, he won two!

No Stopping Him

Though Thorpe was celebrated as an American hero, he wasn’t officially an American citizen. Like most Native people, he wasn’t granted U.S. citizenship until 1924.

That wasn’t the only injustice Thorpe faced. In 1913, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) took away his gold medals. Newspapers had reported that he had earned about $25 per week playing baseball a few years earlier. That broke Olympic rules, which didn’t allow professional athletes to compete.

Many people had known that Thorpe played pro baseball, but no one had told him he could get into trouble for it. His Olympic coach may have even encouraged him to play baseball. But he didn’t come to Thorpe’s defense.

Thorpe didn’t let the disappointment of losing his Olympic medals stop him. He went on to play Major League Baseball for six seasons. He also became pro football’s first superstar.

Righting a Wrong

Thorpe died in 1953, at age 65. For years, his family and supporters fought to have his medals returned. In 1983, the IOC restored his gold medals. But he was listed as co-champion with the second-place finishers. Finally, this past July, the IOC declared Thorpe the sole winner of both events.

“After all these years, he was finally recognized in the way he should have been,” says John Thorpe.