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| Looking over the 25 duplicate medals of Jim Thorpe's pre-Olympic victories are: (left to right) Anne Marie Fitzpatrick of the Jim Thorpe Birthday Weekend Committee; Chuck Gentile, Sports Director at the US Army War College at the Carlisle Barracks, and his wife, Wanda Gentile; Craig Zurn, president of the Jim Thorpe National Bank, and Raymond Brader of the Jim Thorpe Birthday Weekend Committee. |
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(The following photos are courtesy of the International Olympic Committee)
Jim Thorpe
Photograph of Jim Thorpe displayed on the International Olympic Committee website, the same site that does not recognize him as the winner of the Decathlon and Pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics. |
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| King Gustav V of Sweden enters the Olympic Stadium at the start of the 1912 Olympics. He would soon proclaim to Jim Thorpe "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world." |
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Publisher's note:
Just days after this article first appeared in the Times News on July 2, the IOC's web site was changed and now Jim Thorpe is credited with winning Gold Medals in the Pentathlon and Decathlon.
One hundred years ago, Jim Thorpe won the Decathlon and the Pentathlon. Everyone knows that—except perhaps the International Olympic Committee.
The IOC website, www.olympic.org, cites the gold medal winner of the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Men's Decathlon as Hugo K. Wieslander of Sweden, and the gold medal winner of the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Men's Pentathlon as Ferdinand Reinhardt Bie of Norway.
This injustice continues, even though Jim Thorpe's world record performance bested both Wieslander's and Bie's scores by an incredible 10 percent, and Thorpe's medals were reinstated in 1982. Yet, as far as the IOC's record books are concerned, Jim Thorpe is a co-winner, and his achievements are an asterisk on a page.
"It's a bit surprising," said Anne Marie Fitzpatrick of the Jim Thorpe Birthday Weekend Committee. "I thought that was corrected when the Wheelers got Jim Thorpe's medals returned."
But with the centennial of the 1912 Olympics approaching, the issue again is in the public eye—as noted in the recent www.smithsonianmag.com article "Why Are Jim Thorpe's Olympic Records Still Not Recognized?"
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The article concludes, "It's commonly believed that Thorpe at last received Olympic justice in October of 1982 when the IOC bowed to years of public pressure and delivered two replica medals to his family, announcing, 'The name of James Thorpe will be added to the list of athletes who were crowned Olympic champions at the 1912 Games.' What's less commonly known is that the IOC appended this small, mean sentence: 'However, the official report for these Games will not be modified.'
"In other words, the IOC refused even to acknowledge Thorpe's results in the 15 events he competed in. To this day the Olympic record does not mention them. The IOC also refused to demote Wieslander and the other runners-up from their elevated medal status. Wieslander's results stand as the official winning tally. Thorpe was merely a co-champion, with no numerical evidence of his overwhelming superiority. This is no small thing. It made Thorpe an asterisk, not a champion. It was lip service, not restitution."
On this 100-year anniversary of the Stockholm Games, there are several good reasons for the IOC to relent and fully recognize Thorpe as the sole champion that he was."
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