The strangest story from the Olympics .. $ 25 killed Thorpe's fame

No achievement in Stockholm in 1912 compares with the story of American Jim Thorpe, winner of the pentathlon and decathlon competitions, a story that chronicled its repercussions and consequences for the Games and still is.

It is the "drama" that followed the extraordinary victory, and the bricks in the royal stadium's walls and the ivy trees that shade them still remember him... And King Gustav's words on the day of the coronation of the winners to him: "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world", are engraved on his grave. But Thorpe's main problem seems to be with fame. She is undoubtedly his enemy and bringing harm to him.

After a few months of "Olympic glory", Thorpe was suspended and stripped of his gold for professionalism, after it was proven that he was paid $25 to play for a baseball team in North Carolina in violation of the then-existing amateur rules.. Perhaps the transparency of this player cost him a heavy price, because many champions, including Olympians, They were involved in professional American teams under pseudonyms. When interrogated, Thorpe simply replied, "I did not play for money, I accepted to participate because I love the game... Two years ago I was free to prepare for the Olympics in order to win the medal and national honor."

Thorpe was officially rehabilitated on October 23, 1982, and then President of the International Olympic Committee Juan Antonio Samaranch presented the two medals to his children on January 18, 1983, and then honored him on the sidelines of the Los Angeles Games in 1984. This happened 31 years after his tragic death of a heart attack (March 28 1953).

Best Athlete - Thorpe (1.84m and 80kg) was a stark model of the ideal champion, and international polls chose him as "the best athlete of the first half of the twentieth century".

In the Stockholm Olympics, Thorpe with determination, calm and cold nerves "killed his opponents" 8412 points in the decathlon, compared to 7724 points for Swede Hugo Weislander (the world record holder of 7244 n), and his numbers were all "fabulous" if you will. For example, in the high jump, he surpassed the record won by Bob Matthias in the 1948 London Games in the high jump, and completed the 1500m race, in a time nine seconds less than what Raver Johnson won in the 1960 Rome Games.

Overall, Thorpe competed in 17 games, to victory In decathlon and pentathlon, he finished fourth in the high jump (1.87 m) and seventh in the long jump (6.89 m), and the programming of competitions did not allow him to compete in hurdles races.

Thorpe's coach, Glenn Scobey (Bob), a soccer and athletics major, had prepared his player at Carlist College in Pennsylvania, and he was looking good in him as he planned to build a team that could rival Harvard, Yale, and State and Princeton. He was a captain and goalscorer who secured the victory over Harvard 18-15 in 1911 and scored the 18 points on his own. To his talent in baseball, Thorpe has been practicing athletics since 1907.

Thorpe was born on May 22, 1887, in Oklahoma, on the Sachs and Fox Indian Reservation. But his race mixed with his mother's French-Irish blood... and he ended up being an alcoholic and a gambler.

His grandfather was of Irish descent and married a girl from the Sachs and Fox tribe in Kansas and moved to Oklahoma, and his father Hiram married Charlotte Vue to a French father and an Indian mother.

From a hero who receives congratulations from President Roosevelt on his victory day and a parade in his honor and other American heroes is held on Fifth Avenue in New York after returning from Stockholm, Thorpe turned into a pariah after the news published by a newspaper in Connecticut about his "professionalism" .. and later became a player in the New York Giants and CCC Reds (1919), and played American football between 1915 and 1928 in several clubs, including Bulldogs Conton (Ohio). He also assumed the position of president of the Professional Players Association.. and the act of staying up late and alcohol affected his body and exhausted his health, and he died at the age of 65

Thorpe grew up in the town of Munch Chong, which was known to prosper since the mid-nineteenth century, and it was named after him after his Olympic success, and a huge tomb was built for him from 20 tons of pink granite, and engraved pictures representing him throwing the disc, pushing the shot and racing in the barriers, in addition to What King Gustav told him.

Thorpe is also "The Bronze Man", the title of Michael Curtis' documentary about his life, starring Greg Douglas.

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