He hated the shut-in strictures of school, and he bolted every formal institution he attended. He would trust anybody.
With students from 6 to college age, at its height Carlisle had an enrollment of no more than 1, pupils, yet on the collegiate playing fields it was the equal of the Ivy League powers, one of the more remarkable stories in American sports. This was partly thanks to Thorpe, who won renown in football, baseball, track and lacrosse, and also competed in hockey, handball, tennis, boxing and ballroom dancing. At track meets, Warner signed him up for six and seven events. Once, Thorpe single-handedly won a dual meet against Lafayette, taking first in the high hurdles, low hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put and discus throw.
The result of all this varied activity was that he became highly practiced in two methods modern athletes now recognize as building blocks of performance: imitation and visualization. Thorpe studied other athletes as closely as he had once studied horses, borrowing their techniques. Until , Thorpe had never thrown a javelin or pole-vaulted. Nevertheless, he managed second place. By the time Thorpe embarked for Stockholm aboard the ocean liner Finland with the rest of the U.
Olympic contingent—among whom numbered a West Pointer named George Patton and a Hawaiian swimmer named Duke Kahanamoku—he was in the peak shape of his life and spent a good deal of his time tapering and visualizing. This led to the legend that he was merely a skylarker. I think that will win it. The numbers Thorpe posted in Stockholm give us a concrete answer: He would.
Thorpe began the Olympics by crushing the field in the now-defunct pentathlon, which consisted of five events in a single day. He placed first in four of them, dusting his competition in the 1,meter run by almost five seconds. A week later the three-day decathlon competition began in a pouring rain.
Thorpe opened the event by splashing down the track in the meter dash in Warner hastily put together a mismatched pair in time for the high jump, which Thorpe won. Later that afternoon came one of his favorite events, the meter hurdles.
Thorpe blistered the track in On the final day of competition, Thorpe placed third and fourth in the events in which he was most inexperienced, the pole vault and javelin. Then came the very last event, the 1,meter run. The metric mile was a leg-burning monster that came after nine other events over two days. And he was still in mismatched shoes. Proving he still loomed large in the American consciousness, he was voted the previous century's greatest athlete in a ABC Sports poll, and finished third in another ballot conducted by the Associated Press.
In , Thorpe's son Jack filed a federal lawsuit to bring his father's remains back to Oklahoma. A trial court judge originally sided in the family's favor, but in a federal appeals court overturned that ruling.
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He became an American folk hero and the "Bowie Knife" is named after him. Jim Morrison was the charismatic singer and songwriter for the rock group the Doors until his death in Paris at age Jim Croce was an American folk singer and songwriter.
He released five studio albums between and , before his untimely death in Jim Jones was best known as the cult leader of the Peoples Temple who led more than followers in a mass suicide via cyanide-laced punch known as the Jonestown Massacre. Jim Henson was an American puppeteer best known for creating TV characters, including the Muppets, and for his work on the popular children's show 'Sesame Street.
Comedic actor Jim Varney played his signature character Ernest P. Worrell in hundreds of commercials and five Disney films including 'Ernest Goes to Camp. Native American Jim Thorpe won the pentathlon and decathlon at the Olympics but was stripped of his gold medals for violating amateur eligibility rules.
He played outfield with New York for three seasons before relocating and playing with the Cincinnati Reds in He played 77 games with the Reds before finally returning to the Giants for an additional 26 games. In , he played his final season in major league baseball, ending on the Boston Braves team. During much of his baseball years, Thorpe was also immersed in professional football. In the years following, he organized, coached and played with the Oorang Indians, a professional football team comprised completely of American Indians.
Additionally, he was instrumental in forming the American Professional Football Association, and eventually became the president of the group. In all, Thorpe played with six different teams during his career in pro football, ending with a stint with the Chicago Cardinals in Life after professional athletics was exciting for Thorpe. He worked as an extra in movies, served as superintendent of recreation in the Chicago Park System, and was also quite vocal with matters of Indian affairs.
Thorpe died on March 28, of a heart attack. The tragedy of the loss of his Stockholm medals because of thoughtless and unimportant professionalism darkened much of his career and should have been rectified long ago.
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