One of the best football players ever
Olympic Decathlon champion
Olympic Pentathlon champion
Professional football player
Major League Baseball player
Professional basketball player
Professional boxer
After Thorpe won the decathlon and pentathlon at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, King Gustav V of Sweden told Thorpe: "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world."
Jim responded, “Thanks king."
"He was the greatest athlete who ever lived.... What he had was natural ability. There wasn't anything he couldn't do. All he had to see is someone doin' something and he tried it ... and he'd do it better."
-- 1912 Olympic silver medalist Abel Kiviat
Future President Dwight Eisenhower, who played against Thorpe's Carlisle [American Indian} football team in 1912, recalled of Thorpe in a 1961 speech:
"Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw."
Someone stole his shoes just before he was due to compete at the 1912 Olympics, so he found some discarded ones in a rubbish bin and won his medals wearing them. He is shown in a 1912 photo wearing two different shoes and extra socks because one shoe was too big.
When it was found that Thorpe had played a few semi professional baseball games before he was in the Olympics. the pompous Olympic Committee had Thorpe's Olympic gold medals taken away and his name removed from the record books.
"Jim was very proud of the great things he'd done. A very proud man....Very late one night Jim came in and woke me up. ... He was crying, and tears were rolling down his cheeks. `You know, Chief,' he said, `the King of Sweden gave me those trophies, he gave them to me. But they took them away from me. They're mine, Chief; I won them fair and square.' It broke his heart and he never really recovered."
----Chief Meyers, Thorpe's roommate and catcher for the New York Giants