US Olympic Champion Had Medals Stripped Over Technicality Before Tragic Death

An Olympic trailblazer died in poverty after being cruelly stripped of his medals over a technicality.

Jim Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States at the Olympics after winning two events at the 1912 Games in Stockholm.

Thorpe, a member of the Native American Sac and Fox Nation, was crowned champion in the classic pentathlon and decathlon.

King Gustav V of Sweden hailed Thorpe as 'the greatest athlete in the world' after the Games, and the American was reported to have returned from Sweden with $50,000 worth of trophies - a huge sum of money at the time, worth around $1.67 million today.

However, just months after returning to the US a hero, Thorpe was stripped of his Olympic medals.

The decision was made after the Amateur Athletic Union filed charges of professionalism against him, accusing him of receiving pay for playing summer baseball with the Rocky Mount Club in the minor Eastern Carolina League.

Jim Thorpe won two golds at the 1912 Olympic Games (Image: Getty)

At the time, the Olympics were strictly amateur and while the amount of money Thorpe earned from baseball was reported to be 'negligible' by the New York Times, he was deemed to have broken Olympic rules.

The American Olympic Committee sent back the gifts and medals given Thorpe, with the prizes awarded to the runners-up in the pentathlon and decathlon events at Stockholm.

The controversy surrounding Thorpe created huge headlines and was described as the first major international sports scandal.

Thorpe would retire from sports in 1928 and later fell on hard times, working as an extra in films to make ends meet.

He later died in 1953 after suffering a heart attack while eating a meal with his wife, with historian Matt Andrews stating that he was 'penniless' at the time of his death.

In 1982, 29 years after Thorpe's death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave duplicate gold medals to his family in an effort to right the wrongs of the past.

However, his Olympic records were not officially reinstated, nor was his status as the sole gold medallist in the 1912 classic pentathlon and decathlon.

He had his medals stripped from him before they were fully reinstated 110 years later (Image: Getty)

But in 2022, a decision was made to reinstate him as sole champion, nearly 110 years after he was first stripped of his medals.

The decision came after a Bright Path Strong petition called for Thorpe to be declared the outright winner and have his achievements officially recognised by the IOC.

"We welcome the fact that, thanks to the great engagement of Bright Path Strong, a solution could be found," former IOC president Thomas Bach said at the time, as reported by The Guardian.

"This is a most exceptional and unique situation, which has been addressed by an extraordinary gesture of fair play from the National Olympic Committees concerned."