Jim Thorpe

Jim Thorpe was a Native American athlete who is often called the greatest all-around athlete in American history. He lived from 1887 to 1953. Thorpe played professional football, baseball, and basketball. He also won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games. No other athlete has ever matched his range across so many sports.

Thorpe was born in what was then Indian Territory, in an area that later became the state of Oklahoma. He was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation. His Native name was Wa-Tho-Huk, which means "Bright Path." As a boy, he ran for miles across the open country and played games with his twin brother, Charlie. After Charlie died of illness at age nine, Jim threw himself into sports.

He went to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Carlisle was a boarding school that forced Native children to give up their languages and traditions. The system was harsh and harmful, but Thorpe found a coach there named Pop Warner who saw his talent. Thorpe became a college football star. He could run, kick, throw, and tackle. In 1911 and 1912, he led tiny Carlisle to wins over much bigger schools, including Harvard and Army.

In 1912, Thorpe traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, for the Olympics. He won gold in the pentathlon and the decathlon, two events that test athletes in many different sports at once. He won the decathlon by almost 700 points, a huge margin. King Gustav V of Sweden handed him his medals himself.

Then came one of the saddest stories in sports. A reporter found out that Thorpe had been paid a small amount to play minor league baseball one summer before the Olympics. Olympic rules at the time said athletes had to be unpaid amateurs. Officials took his medals away. Many people believed the punishment was unfair, partly because of how Thorpe was treated as a Native man. The medals were finally returned to his family in 1983, 30 years after his death.

After the Olympics, Thorpe played pro baseball for the New York Giants and other teams. He played pro football too, and helped start the league that became the NFL. He served as its first president. In 2022, more than a century after the 1912 Games, the International Olympic Committee officially named him the sole winner of those events again. His bright path had finally been set straight.