Jim Thorpe has been reinstated as the sole winner of the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon, gold medals that were stripped from him in one of the world's first "sports scandals."
LAUSANNE, Switzerland-In July, Jim Thorpe was reinstated as the sole winner of the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon in Stockholm.
The change was announced by the Internation Olympic Committee (IOC) on the 110th anniversary of King Gustav V of Sweden proclaiming him as "the greatest athlete in the world."
Thorpe was stripped of his gold medals when Olympic authorities determined that he had broken the Olympic amateur rules because he had received payment to play in minor league baseball. However, many still consider the Native American sports dynamo the best all-around athlete ever. The Associated Press delcared him as Athlete of the Half Century in a 1950 poll.
Thorpe died in 1953 and in 1982 the International Olympic Committee gave duplicate gold medals to his family but his Olympic records were not reinstated.
Thorpe's Native American name, Wa-Tho-Huk, means "Bright Path." Two years ago, the Bright Path Strong organization contacted the family of the Olympain who had been elevated to gold medalist after Thorpe's dismissal. The Olympian, Hugo Wieslander, had never accepted the medal, considering that Thorpe deserved it. The organization petitioned for Thope to be declared the outright winner of the pentathlon and decathlon in 1912.
"The same declaration was received from the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports, whose athlete, Ferdinand Bie, was named as the gold medalist when Thorpe was stripped of the pentathlon title," the IOC told the Associated Press.
Bie will be listed as the silver medalist in the pentathlon, and Wieslander with silver in the decathlon. World Athletics, the governing body of track and field, has also agreed to amend its records, the IOC said.
"We are so grateful this nearly 110-year-old injustice has finally been corrected, and there is no confusion about the most remarkable athlete in history," Nedra Darling, the Bright Path Strong organization co-founder and citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, told Associated Press.
As the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States, Thorpe "has inspired our people for generations," said Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians.
