Reinstated
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IOC reinstates Jim Thorpe as sole winner for 1912 Olympic golds
Jim Thorpe has been reinstated as the sole winner of the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon in Stockholm — nearly 110 years after being stripped of those gold medals for violations of strict amateurism rules of the time.
The International Olympic Committee announced the change Friday on the 110th anniversary of Thorpe winning the decathlon and later being proclaimed by King Gustav V of Sweden as “the greatest athlete in the world.”
Thorpe, a Native American, returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York, but months later it was discovered he had been paid to play minor league baseball over two summers, an infringement of the Olympic amateurism rules. He was stripped of his gold medals in what was described as the first major international sports scandal.
Thorpe to some remains the greatest all-around athlete ever. He was voted as the Associated Press’ Athlete of the Half Century in a poll in 1950.
In 1982 — 29 years after Thorpe’s death — the IOC gave duplicate gold medals to his family but his Olympic records were not reinstated, nor was his status as the sole gold medalist of the two events.
Two years ago, a Bright Path Strong petition advocated declaring Thorpe the outright winner of the pentathlon and decathlon in 1912. The IOC had listed him as a co-champion in the official record book.
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Why? If he violated the rules, he violated the rules. I can't say whether he did or not, but if he did, that's the wrong decision.
@Klaus said in Reinstated:
Why? If he violated the rules, he violated the rules. I can't say whether he did or not, but if he did, that's the wrong decision.
No, it's the right decision. A couple of reasons...
- The sport he received money for playing - semipro baseball - had absolutely nothing to do with his Olympic performance. Under those rules, you could win money at tiddley-winks and be disqualified from pole-vaulting, That's asinine.
- In today's sports world, you can be a professional and compete in the Olympics. Probably a third of all Olympic basketball players are professional basket ballers.
The idea of the Olympics is for the best athletes in the world to compete to see who wears the Gold, Silver and Bronze. The best means the best.
