By: Troy MacNeill

ORLANDO, Fla. (July 18, 2022) – Jim Thorpe is considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports. However, the Olympic history books and Thorpe’s gold medals have had an asterisk by them for years… until now. As of July 15, 2022, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will henceforth display the name of Jim Thorpe as the sole gold medallist in pentathlon and decathlon at the Olympic Games Stockholm 1912. This change comes on the very day of the 110th anniversary of Thorpe’s medal in decathlon.
 
Jim Thorpe posthumously received the 2nd AAU Gussie Crawford Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 during the 88th AAU Sullivan Ceremony in New York. He has always been regarded as one of the best athletes ever, but he was also someone who broke barriers. Thanks to the support of thousands who signed a petition, the history books will be corrected to show Thorpe as the sole Stockholm 1912 pentathlon and decathlon gold medalist.
 
While the AAU is no longer the governing body that prepares US athletes for the Olympics, up until the late 1970’s the AAU was the USOCP.  Jim Thorpe was an outstanding AAU athlete who represented the US in the Olympics and in 1912 in the Stockholm Olympics, he won his two gold medals.
 
However, he had those medals stripped after it was found he played semi-professional football for two years due to amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals. But, they did not correct the official Olympic records, referring Thorpe as ‘co-champion’ versus ‘champion’ until now.
 
Since 2020, AAU had been working with Bright Path Strong and the Jim Thorpe family on a petition to restore the legendary American Indian athlete’s status in the IOC’s record book. After thousands of individuals signed the petition, the correction has been made.
 
In 1973, the AAU restored Thorpe’s amateur status thus clearing the way for vindication by the IOC and in 1997, Keith Noll, national chair of both the AAU’s football and hockey programs, organized a formal ceremony to return Jim’s AAU medals to his family. This has always been a passion project for Noll.
 
“Robert Wheeler, Flo Ridlon, and Anita DeFrantz, a member of the IOC Executive Committee, informed me that the successful petition drives, and past AAU President Dr. Roger Goudy's letter to IOC President Thomas Bach, were instrumental in the success of this initiative,” Noll stated. “The return of Jim Thorpe to the IOC record books has been a decades-old fight by the AAU Sports program, Wheeler, author of the book on Jim Thorpe, Flo Ridlon, V.P. of Wheeler-Ridlon Communications, Bright Path, and the many Native American Tribal Organizations who worked to make this happen.”
 
To everyone who signed the petition, thank you. Thorpe’s name can finally go down in Olympic history as it was meant to… the one and only 1912 Stockholm Olympic Pentathlon and Decathlon Gold Medalist.
 
To read the press release from the International Olympic Committee, click here. To learn more about Bright Path Strong, visit brightpathstrong.org.
 
To read more about Jim Thorpe receiving the 2^nd AAU Gussie Crawford Achievement Award, click here.