The Greatest Athlete in the World (July/August 1992 | Volume: 43, Issue: 4)

The Greatest Athlete in the World

AH article image

Authors: Joseph D’O’brian

Historic Era: Era 7: The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)

Historic Theme:

Subject:

July/August 1992 | Volume 43, Issue 4

jim thorpe
Born in 1888 to an Indian father and French mother, Thorpe is best known for winning the pentathlon and the decathlon at the 1912 Olympics, and for his exploits in football and baseball. Wikimedia

Americans have always demanded that their heroes be more than human. George Washington had to have thrown the dollar across the Potomac, Davy Crockett had to have wrestled a grizzly, Babe Ruth had to have come through for a dying boy with a promised home run. We all know that these stories are Sunday truths, but somehow the men wouldn’t be the same without them.

Likewise many of the stories about America’s greatest Olympic hero. Damon Runyon once remarked, “More lies have been told about Jim Thorpe than about any other athlete.” That may be true. Here are a few:

In the 1912 Olympics, he won a gold medal in each event in which he competed—five, or eight, or ten events. He set records in each of those events, most of which stood for many years. He did this without having trained at all. In his twenty years of college and pro football, he never missed a tackle. He could run the length of a football field in ten seconds flat—in full pads. His average punting distance was eighty yards, and he could occasionally boot a hundred. On one long touchdown run, he tucked a would-be tackier under his free arm and carried him the last 20 yards.

What actually is true is that, without much question, Thorpe was the best all-around athlete in modern history. He is best known for winning the pentathlon and the decathlon at the 1912 Olympics and for his exploits on the football field. He was one of only a half dozen men who ever played both major-league baseball and NFL football; indeed, he was the first president of the National Football League. He also excelled at billiards, bowling, golf, swimming, gymnastics, rowing, hockey, figure skating, hunting, fishing, horseback riding, and dancing.

What actually is true is that, without much question, Thorpe was the best all-around athlete in modern history.

And he is the man whose Olympic medals were revoked on dubious grounds—possibly as a result of class prejudice. Because of that, his story became irresistible: that of the honest man struggling all his life for vindication, and finding it only posthumously. Today, eighty years after his triumph at Stockholm, the legend is complete. Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals and records have been restored; Jim Thorpe’s name adorns the trophy that goes annually to the National Football League’s most valuable player; and Jim Thorpe is buried in a town named Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

Thorpe was born—with a twin brother, Charlie—on May 28, 1888, near Prague, Oklahoma Territory (formerly Indian Territory), of an Indian and Irish father and an Indian and French mother. He was five-eighths Indian, descended from the Sac