A latter day Colossus emerged at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Jim Thorpe donned discarded, dissimilar and oversized footwear recovered from a rubbish bin, after his shoes were stolen. But he struck gold in the pentathlon and decathlon — ultimate tests of athletic ability and versatility — introduced for the first time in the quadrennial Games.
Logging 8412 points, he eclipsed the 10-event discipline’s existing World record by a staggering 998 points, prompting King Gustav V of Sweden to say, “You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world.”
Less than a year later, he was deprived of both gold medals, after an American Athletic Union (AAU) investigation said he had played semi-professional baseball in 1909; the Olympics then was restricted to amateurs.
“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.
“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,” Thorpe pleaded with AAU secretary James Edward Sullivan, alluding to aliases his contemporaries operated under, but in vain.
The penalty reeked of racism but he moved on, excelling in basketball, golf, swimming, rowing, hockey, boxing and lacrosse.
Inability to adjust to a career outside sports and alcoholism reduced him to penury, his wife imploring support for treating lip cancer he suffered in later years.
Would-be US President Dwight Eisenhower played against him in one season and remembered Thorpe in a 1961 speech: “Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed.
“My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practised in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw.”
Thorpe remained loyal to his Red Indian and Roman Catholic roots, his native American simplicity revealed when recalling the ticker-tape reception he returned to from Stockholm.
“I heard people yelling my name and I couldn’t realise how one fellow could have so many friends,” he remarked.
