Jim Thorpe

James Francis Thorpe was born on the Sac and Fox Indian reservation near Prague, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Enrolled at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1904, Thorpe came under the guidance of football pioneer Pop Warner, leading Carlisle's small Native American team to astonishing collegiate upsets over powerhouse programs like Harvard, Army, and Pittsburgh.

At the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, Thorpe achieved athletic immortality. Wearing mismatched shoes scavenged from a trash can after his own were stolen, Thorpe won both the pentathlon and decathlon by staggering margins, winning eight of the fifteen individual events. At the medal ceremony, King Gustav V of Sweden placed the gold wreath on his head and declared: 'Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world,' to which Thorpe modestly replied: 'Thanks, King.'

In 1913, the AAU stripped Thorpe of his Olympic medals on technical amateurism grounds because he had earned minor pocket money playing semi-pro baseball. Undaunted, Thorpe played Major League Baseball for the New York Giants and Boston Braves, starred in professional football for the Canton Bulldogs, and in 1920 was elected the inaugural President of the American Professional Football Association (which became the NFL). In 1983, thirty years after his death, the IOC restored his Olympic medals, and in 2022 declared him the sole official champion of the 1912 decathlon and pentathlon.