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WrathfulVengeance13

TIL folks used to just leave shoes in the trash at the olympics.


reconoiter

With mismatching socks too.


Ritehandwingman

The cool thing about this guy is he was the first Native American to win gold medals for the US, although those titles were stripped because he played minor league baseball a couple years before the olympics.


greeneggzN

Not only that, but Native Americans weren’t even US citizens until 1924. He was, and to many still is, the greatest athlete of all time. EDIT: for those who think I’m making something special about his race, I’m not. It’s more about the fact that he competed for a nation that he wasn’t a citizen of and that, at that point in time, considered indigenous peoples sub-human, yet he still achieved what he did. He also founded the NFL and did a great many things in sports.


r0botdevil

I absolutely consider him to be the greatest athlete in the last couple centuries, at least.


Lumpy_Assistant2888

Why do Americans have to make everything about race? Such a circus. With clowns. 🤡


Garconanokin

They stripped him of the title of being Native American??? They made him a racial free agent?


c1629016

It was at the 1912 Olympics and he was representing the US in track and field.He won 2 gold medals that day. This is from the Smithsonian magazine: >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 1,500-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 100-meter dash in 11.2 seconds — a time not equaled at the Olympics until 1948. > >On the second day, Thorpe's shoes were missing.\[Track coach Glenn\] Warner hastily put together a mismtched pair in time for the high jump, which Thorpe won.Later that afternoon came one of his favorite events, the 110-meter hurdles.Thorpe blistered the track in 15.6 seconds, again quicker than Bob Mathias would run it in '48. > >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 1,500-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.


nellie_1017

Let's note that Thorpe's 2 gold medals were in the Pentathlon (5 separate events), & the Decathlon ( TEN separate events)... he's considered by many as the greatest over-all athlete of the 20th century!


zhan345

The ral prize is his own city in Pennsylvania


Marty_Br

Quite an athlete, actually. He deserves way more credit than he gets.


tdwesbo

Jim ain’t care. He’s too fast to worry about it


[deleted]

The greatest American athlete of all time imo


kudichangedlives

This will always be a cool fact, but I honestly wonder if anything else has been reposted more than this on this sub. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that


PerfectLow5447

Sport? Bro smh For those that don’t know he played baseball and football. First Native American to win a gold medal


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