Was Jim Thorpe the greatest athlete in the world? King Gustav V of Sweden certainly thought so. He described Thorpe thus as he handed him two gold medals at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Jim Thorpe was a legendary Native American sportsman, who lived from 1888 – 1953. He was a Sac and Fox Native American, […] More…
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This quirky, 1930s Hungarian table tennis postcard is in our newest New Stock catalogue: https://www.sportspages.com/catalogue/new-stock-58 along with over 100 other items from nearly as many sports. Our catalogues come out regularly: don’t miss them by signing up for them on the bottom of our home page! More…
What is the England v Australia Ashes Origin Story? As we all know, the England v Australia rivalry in cricket goes back a long way but do you know the details of the Ashes Origin Story? The first test match between the two countries was in 1877 when James Lillywhite led an England team on […] More…
We’re eagerly awaiting the start of this year’s Ryder Cup. We’ve been testing ourselves – and failing – on what we know about its history. So we did a bit of digging and here’s what we found: Samuel Ryder originally sponsored the Ryder Cup after watching a friendly transatlantic match at Wentworth in 1926. Ryder […] More…
Jim Thorpe: was he the Greatest Athlete in the World?
14th May 2026
You can find Jim Thorpe’s Olympic memoirs in our New Stock Catalogue 60
Was Jim Thorpe the greatest athlete in the world? King Gustav V of Sweden certainly thought so. He described Thorpe thus as he handed him two gold medals at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.
Jim Thorpe was a legendary Native American sportsman, who lived from 1888 – 1953. He was a Sac and Fox Native American, who was orphaned early. He was raised in government schools. He was phenomenal at all sports. When he was 5’8 he tried high jump for the first time while in high school. He jumped 5’9.
In 19o9 and 1910, he played baseball for the Rocky Mountain club in North Carolina, for which he received small payments. When he competed at the Olympics in 1912, he won the pentathlon AND the decathlon. He beat his nearest challenger by nearly 700 points and set a world record, which lasted until 1948. It was this that prompted King Gustav V to describe him as the ‘greatest athlete in the world’.
Cruelly, The IOC stripped Thorpe of his medals a year later in 1913 when the payments he had received from the Rocky Mountain Club came to light. As upsetting as that must have been, Thorpe moved on, winning: he was one of the first major stars of professional American football. He played a part in the creation of the NFL and became its first president in 1920.
After Thorpe retired from professional sport, he took minor roles as a Native American in 50 films up until the 1950s when he died. In 1983 the IOC also reinstated his medals in a moving ceremony with two of his children there. Certainly one of the sporting greats and certainly a life well lived: worth reading about too – and you can do so in his History of the Olympics in our newest New Stock catalogue!
