All language subtitles for Jim.Thorpe.Lit.By.Lightning.2025.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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He was at the dawn
of American organized sports.

He set a record
that lasted for 40 years.

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[cheers and applause]

I haven't seen anything
since then

that approaches
that level of greatness

in so many different sports.

One of the greatest athletes
ever, ever, ever

in all American history.

Everybody will remember
the names of Babe Ruth,

Muhammad Ali,
and certainly Michael Jordan,

but their achievements
don't match that

of the greatest athlete
that ever lived.

And yet not many people
remember his name.

[narrator] Destined to become
the world's greatest athlete.

Jim Thorpe was good enough
to dominate at multiple things,

and that's why he stands alone

when we talk about some
of the greatest athletes

that we've ever had.

[man] It wasn't
just track and field,

but it was
football, basketball, baseball.

I heard he was
a good ballroom dancer.

[man] There was nothing
that Jim Thorpe couldn't do

as an athlete.

But beyond that, what he
represents is the perseverance

of Native peoples
in this country.

Jim Thorpe was living
in a time

when most people
around the globe

didn't see Indigenous peoples
as human beings.

They would shout things
at him like "dog soup,"

or they would do war whoops
to taunt him.

There was a lot of
anti-Indigenous racism

at that time.

[Thorpe] Some of the memories
are bitter.

[man] The gold medals
and trophies

were taken away from him.

It was an act
of enormous injustice.

And though my records
have been wiped

from the official books...

I mean, it was something
that he never got over

and really loomed over him
the rest of his life.

...I find some consolation
in believing

they are still remembered
by the American people.

People grabbed onto him
almost like a folk hero

as the man wronged
by the big guys.

They wanted some vindication
for Jim.

♪

As a child,

I had tried to emulate
the spirited abandon

of a running horse,

head up and feet coming down
with a thundering certainty.

♪♪

I ran and jumped
and fought and wrestled

and climbed trees
as a youngster

because it was as natural

for an Indian child
to do those things

as it was to eat and sleep.

Jim was born
into poverty in Oklahoma

in a small cabin in 1887.

It's said that the night
he was born,

there was lightning striking
on the river nearby.

He was given the name
Wa-tho-Huk,

which means "bright path"
or "path lit by lightning."

And I mean,
it's pretty fitting, right?

He went on to shock the world.

[woman] He was born
on the Sac and Fox reservation.

Growing up
on the reservation,

he liked challenging
his own body,

even as a little boy,

whether it was swimming
in the North Canadian River

or it was chasing rabbits
and catching them.

It was catching wild horses.
It was running over fences.

And later
people would comment

that that was like
a natural cross-training.

The open plains
and the river bottoms

were my first track field.

It was on them that I learned
to run as a child.

But the reservation existed
really only for

two or three more years.

Before Europeans arrived
in this country,

there were millions
of Native peoples already here.

By the time
of Jim Thorpe's birth,

there were
fewer than 300,000 left.

[narrator] In the years
leading up to Thorpe's birth,

the United States'
relentless westward expansion

fueled the Lakota Sioux Wars,

as the nation encroached
on Indigenous lands

and forced tribes
onto reservations.

Indian reservations were
really prison camps,

and they were only supposed to
be around for 25 years,

And at the end of 25 years,

we would have
all been assimilated or dead.

[man] In 1887,

Senator Henry Dawes
introduced a bill

known as the Dawes Act,

also known
as the Allotment Act.

It sought to take away
what the government considered

excess Indian land.

There are old accounts
and images

of "Indian land for sale"
or "free Indian land."

And so in order
to get that land,

they organized
the famous Oklahoma land runs.

♪

[Buford]
At the crack of a pistol,

all these wagons and people
and horses

flooded into what had been
their reservation.

People just, like, ran and put
their stake in the ground

and claimed land --
stolen land, Native land.

[Buford] Imagine what
that was like,

particularly for
a three, four-year-old child

like Jim Thorpe.

You had this place
that you were born into,

and overnight it's overrun
by these strange white people.

[Proudfit] They were looking
at Native people as savages

to be killed and forcibly
removed through any means.

[Doyle] It's amazing
that these communities survived.

Even more stunning is that
an athlete could emerge from

those kind of circumstances.

[Maraniss] Indian Territory
of Oklahoma

was the Wild West
in every possible way.

Jim Thorpe's father, Hiram,
represented that.

[Thorpe] My father
was Hiram Phillip Thorpe,

one half Sac and Fox Indian
and one half Irish.

He was a giant of a man.

[Buford] Hiram would take
his sons out into the rural land

for days at a time
and hunt and fish.

But Hiram was also
incredibly rough on them.

When Jim was four,
Hiram saw him dog-paddling

along the edge
of the North Canadian River,

and threw the little guy
out into the current

to see
how his son made it back.

It was 40 yards
to the bank,

and it looked like
a mile to me.

But I made it under
the watchful eye of my father.

He said, "Don't be afraid
of the water, son,

and it won't be afraid
of you."

It encapsulates
what Hiram was like.

So Jim grew up
with that kind of father.

His father taught him
and instilled in him

at a very young age,
to be a man,

you had to step up,
you had to compete.

Native people,
we love competition.

[Buford] So there would be
running contests,

there would be
swimming contests,

there would be
jumping contests.

[Proudfit] You know,
we invented so many sports

that people know in European
culture or American culture,

whether it's soccer, lacrosse,
or even the game of basketball.

Jim Thorpe's love
of athletic endeavors

started in
the Sac and Fox territory.

For Jim Thorpe,
sports are in his blood.

My mother
always looked upon me

as a reincarnation
of Black Hawk,

the Indian chief for whom
the Black Hawk War was named.

[Buford] Black Hawk was
this larger-than-life,

heroic figure that
every Indian boy in that tribe

wanted to model himself on.

[Proudfit] He fought against
Andrew Jackson.

Everyone in America
knew Black Hawk's name.

That's how impressive
Black Hawk was.

So much so that
his name was appropriated

for a World War I
Army division,

the Black Hawk helicopter,
and for the Chicago NHL team.

[narrator] The Dawes Act didn't
just divide up Native land

to be given
to white settlers.

The other portion
of the Dawes Act

was meant to take
Indian children

and put them in boarding
schools far from their homes.

[Buford] Bureau of Indian
Affairs mandated

that the children should go
at a certain age

off to Indian boarding schools.

[Creek]
Sometimes it was voluntary.

Parents would send
their kids there thinking

it was the only way
to ensure their survival.

Other times it was by force.

The United States,
they would kidnap these kids

and they would force them
into these establishments.

And the notion was to take
the children of those warriors

from the Lakota Sioux
and "tame them," quote, unquote.

The boarding school era
was meant

to take children away
from their Native communities

and teach them
the Western way of life.

[woman] They were really
all about assimilation.

Kids were stripped of their
humanity and of their culture.

[Buford] They were
put into uniforms.

If they didn't already have
an Anglo name like Jim --

he was born with one --
they were assigned them.

[Proudfit] You can actually see
pictures of students

who went in Native
with long hair,

with their earrings,
with Native dress.

And then you see
another picture of them

with their short hair
looking very somber.

[Buford] It was all a way
to make them look white

and act white
and eventually be white.

It was a full-on attempt
to reshape an entire generation

of Native people.

[Maraniss] Jim Thorpe endured

three different
boarding schools.

First, he went to

the Sac and Fox
boarding school nearby,

which he hated
and ran away from twice.

[Thorpe] I tired of
the classroom routine

and ran away,
walking back home 23 miles.

My father met me at the door
and marched me back to school.

He kept doing that
and doing that, running home.

And finally Hiram said, "I'm
gonna send you so far away,

you will never be
able to come back.

[train whistle blows]

Then he was sent to
the Haskell Institute in Kansas.

It was at Haskell
I saw my first football game

and developed a love for it,

a love I've had
through the years.

[Maraniss] And finally ended up
at the flagship

U.S. government
boarding school.

On February 4th, 1904,

I entered
the Carlisle Indian School

at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Well, the Carlisle Indian
Industrial School is founded

right after the wars

of the Lakota Sioux
out in the Plains.

Had the motto,
"Kill the Indian, save the man."

And this is where
he came of age in a lot of ways,

and where he began
his career in sports.

[Maraniss] The football team
in particular

was the reason
that anybody knew Carlisle.

When the Carlisle Indians,

this exotic team
of Native people, would go play,

they would draw a huge crowd.

The founder of Carlisle
was Richard Pratt.

He had been an officer
in the Far West

during the so-called
Indian Wars.

[man] He's interested
in assimilation

for the Indigenous people,

but he also believes
they have to prove themselves.

And one of the ways
they can prove to whites

that they're worthy
is through sports.

[Maraniss]
Jim loved football,

and by the time he got
to Carlisle, he wanted to play.

As much
as Jim wanted to play football,

he was too short and slight.

About three months
after my arrival,

I weighed 116 pounds,

and I was five foot,
three inches in height.

He was a scrawny young guy.

[cheers and applause]

[Buford] Football was played
at the highest level

of collegiate hierarchy,
which is Yale and Harvard.

Football was important
to them.

It was the game that was going
to teach the leaders of tomorrow

how to lead, how to be
strategic, how to be smart.

[man] In lieu of a real war,

we're going to put them
out on this field

to turn boys into men.

[narrator]
I've always felt

that football was pretty
closely related to warfare.

I mean, violence is
certainly a part of man,

so why not admit it?

Use it.
Let it out.

Football was a game
of brute force.

Think of two semis just crashing
straight into one another.

It's a collision sport.
It's a violent sport.

Every play
is an act of violence.

American football
was dominated by the famous

so-called flying wedge.

The offense would mass
behind a lead player,

and, based on
models of warfare,

would charge through
the opposing line.

It took steamroller tactics
to move the pigskin

towards the opposing team's
goalposts.

[Creek] In the 1904
college season alone,

there were 20 deaths in football
and hundreds of injuries.

Guys had broken femurs.
Guys were missing ears.

One guy even had
his eye gouged out.

You could punch, you could bite,
you could scratch.

And so a lot of times,
these guys

were just
running into each other,

trying to do
whatever they could

to take the opposing player
out of the game.

Helmets were
definitely not required.

The helmets
maybe they were wearing

were little leather helmets
with very little padding.

[Maraniss]
It was a free-for-all.

Football was a free-for-all.
It was almost outlawed.

♪

The president of Harvard
was calling for

football to be abolished.

[Eisenberg] There was definitely
public pressure.

There were op-eds written.

[Maraniss] The Chicago Tribune
did a series about the number

of deaths and injuries,

and it read like an after action
report from Vietnam,

you know, listing all of these
dead halfbacks and linemen.

[Eisenberg] And so this was not
a tenable situation.

As popular as it was becoming,
you couldn't have people dying.

[Buford]
Teddy Roosevelt was president,

and he was a Harvard man,
and he loved football.

So he called a conference
in the White House

of the leaders
of these top schools

and said, "You've got to make
football safer."

You couldn't have our Ivy League
leaders of tomorrow

getting killed
on the football field.

It was this close
to kind of being out of here,

which is wild to think of
when you think about

how important it's become
in our American sports culture.

♪

At the end of the 1904 term,
Jim decided to leave Carlisle

and to work
in their outing program,

which was a kind of
placement program

where Indian kids would work
as farmers or cooks or maids.

It was also seen as a form of
introduction into white society.

[Thorpe] I was anxious
to go for the experience.

I did all the housework
and learned to sew and cook.

I longed to be
out in the open again.

I felt smothered
with the indoor work.

So he goes on to work
as a farmhand for two years,

laboring in the field
and breaking wild horses

just like
his father taught him.

[Doyle] Breaking horses
is incredibly physical work.

You know,
you're using your arms.

You're using your hands.

You're using your legs
to jump up

to corral the horses.

You're hanging on
for dear life.

By the end of the summer,

Jim's body had changed
dramatically.

When Jim returned to Carlisle,
he was primed. He was ready.

And it was then
that the origin story

of Jim Thorpe the athlete
began.

[Hill] What is wonderful
about reflecting

on Jim Thorpe's legacy
is that you start to hear

all these stories
that sound like,

"Did somebody make that up?

Did that really
actually happen?"

And one of the more famous ones
is the high jump story.

[Maraniss] At Carlisle,
one day he was in overalls,

walking toward
the athletic fields,

saw members of the track team
at the high jump pit.

Jim had no idea
what the high jump was.

He had never seen it before.

[Thorpe]
For several minutes

they successfully went higher
and higher.

Eventually, they placed the bar
at a point they couldn't scale.

He watched boy after boy
fail to make it over the bar.

Intrigued, Jim walks over,

and in his overalls
Jim decided to give it a try.

If you know anything
about Olympic sports

or if you've seen this,

it's an
extraordinarily difficult

thing to do.

[man] Jim Thorpe had
no experience, no training.

He certainly didn't have
the proper attire or footwear.

In just one graceful move,
he runs up,

leaps into the air,
easily clears the bar.

The boys were stunned.

[Hill] Jim Thorpe made
everything look effortless.

Things that take people
years and years and years

of training, of coaching to do,

he could do just like that.

For the fun of it,
I ran and jumped the bar,

turned around and laughed.

Jim just walked away
as if it was no big deal.

When this story reaches
Pop Warner, he said,

"Jim Thorpe just set
the school record."

♪

[Maraniss] Pop Warner,
who was the track coach,

brought Thorpe into his office
the next day and said,

"Here's your uniform.
You're on the track team."

[Buford] But Jim really wasn't
interested in track and field.

He wanted to play football
really badly.

And so when he introduced
the idea

of wanting to play football
to Pop Warner, he thought,

"Why would I ever let
you do this?" [laughs]

"Because have you seen what
happens on a football field?"

But Jim was persistent.

He would constantly,
every day ask Pop,

"When is it gonna be
my turn?

When am I gonna have
a chance to play football?"

I kept after him until
he finally threw a suit to me,

hoping to get rid of me,
I guess.

There was this exercise

where Warner would
set up players every 10 yards,

all the way down the field,

and have somebody
try to run through

without getting tackled,
and nobody could ever do it.

[Anderson] Jim is looking
at 40 players,

and their sole objective
is to tackle Thorpe.

The only experience
I've ever had with a football

was at Haskell.

If that could
be called experience.

My hand had never gripped
a real football.

Warner figured these players
were gonna show Jim

what football was all about.

Thorpe takes off.

He cuts, he weaves, he dodges,
he stiff-arms.

Warner is watching it
slack-jaw.

I heard him say
to one of the trainers,

"He's certainly
a wild Indian."

What he just saw,
that moment,

was the birth of Jim Thorpe,
of the football player.

[narrator]
Jim Thorpe is now a member

of the Carlisle football team.

His dreams
of playing collegiate football

are closer than ever,

but he's relegated
to the backup squad.

[Petrzela] In October of 1907,
Jim got his big break

when Carlisle played
the University of Pennsylvania

at Franklin Field
in Philadelphia.

Pop Warner put him in
to replace an injured player,

but it didn't go
exactly according to plan.

When I was given the ball
to carry in my first big game,

I got excited and didn't follow
my interference.

The result was I crashed
into a stone wall of opposition

and was thrown for a loss.

Jim was not off
to a great start.

But if Jim Thorpe was
confident in anything,

it was that he wasn't gonna
let one bad play stop him.

The next time
the ball was passed to me,

I got away around end

and tore 75 yards
to a touchdown.

And Pop Warner soon decided
I was there to stay.

Along came Mr. Pop Warner,

one of football's
most brilliant minds.

A lot of people have
heard of Pop Warner football.

It is associated with youth
football all across America.

But not many people know
the man behind it.

All these Pop Warner leagues

that comes from Pop Warner
the coach.

Pop Warner was not a pop.

He didn't have any kids.
He played football at Cornell.

And he was older than
some of the other players,

so they started
calling him Pop.

But Pop Warner was
a brilliant football coach.

Pop Warner's coaching style
was that of an innovator.

[Schefter] He was known
for trick plays.

He came up with trick plays
before there were trick plays.

One of his plays,
the hidden ball,

he sewed a pocket
into a player's uniform

and had him stuff
the ball in there

so he could run down the field
without anyone knowing

he was actually carrying it.

The rules committee
would slap it down and say,

"No, you can't
do that anymore."

So then Warner would go back
to the drawing board

and come up with another trick
play or another innovation.

He was pushing, pushing,
pushing the rules all the time.

Warner's imagination
was constantly firing.

He developed
a blocking sled.

He developed
tackling dummies.

He developed
the single wing offense,

the double wing offense,
lightweight uniforms.

So much of what he developed
we still see today

nearly a hundred years later.

[narrator] By 1908,
under Pop's guidance,

Jim is beginning
to make a name for himself.

By the time Carlisle
was scheduled to play

University of Pennsylvania
in October,

Jim Thorpe had created
a identity of toughness.

So he came into that game
with a target on his back.

[Thorpe] Word passed through
the Penn Eleven to get Thorpe,

put him out of the game.

They did everything
in the world to cripple me,

but they didn't take into
consideration the tough hide

and the stubborn constitution
of the prairie Indian.

Well, you think about it,
you know,

you're an Indian kid
in a boarding school.

You've been taken away
from your parents violently.

For young Indian kids,
you really don't have a chance

to express that anger
in any other way

except through
competitive sports.

[narrator] In a fiercely
contested game,

Carlisle trails 6-0
in the final minutes,

but Jim Thorpe refuses
to back down.

In the real world,
he could never really compete

with white people.

Playing football,
he got to compete with them

on an equal playing field.

[Thorpe] I got the ball on
a fast pass and was on my way,

skirting the end,
carrying the mail 65 yards

to a touchdown,
tying the score.

Penn had been
doped to win,

and our tie proved
quite an upset.

[narrator] With Jim's help,
Carlisle goes on

to a 10-2 record
that year.

[Williams] At the same time
Jim's establishing himself

as a football phenomenon,

he also has his eye
on another sport.

When Jim arrived at Carlisle,

he hadn't done
any track and field.

He just knew how to jump
and he knew how to run.

And he was this
incredibly gifted athlete.

Now that Jim was
on the track team,

he was introduced to all these
other sports and competitions

that he'd never seen before.

He needed to be taught,

and there was a very gifted
athlete on the team already

called Albert Exendine.

Warner said to Albert,
"Take Jim under your wing,

and teach him
what he needs to know."

The next thing you know,

Jim Thorpe is
a track and field star.

[narrator] Jim excels
at track and field,

but his true passion
remains football.

Jim really
comes into his own

as a football phenomenon
in 1911,

Carlisle had
a very good season,

and Pop signed up
to play against Harvard.

Well, everyone around
the country

who was following football
was primed for this contest.

The little Indian school
and Harvard.

[Creek] Harvard at the time
was an absolute powerhouse.

Starting in the late 1800s,
over the course of two decades,

they won nine
national championships.

They were unstoppable.

One can only imagine
that Jim Thorpe could recognize

who he was playing against.

These are the elites
of this country.

These are the sons
of the industrialists.

These are the sons
of the landowners

that have taken his homelands
away from his family,

away from his tribe.

And so a part of me
has to think

that perhaps it was
a little bit personal.

But with
the most important game

of Thorpe's career looming,
there's a problem.

[Buford]
Jim had an injury,

so his leg was visibly bandaged
from his ankle to his knee.

It was his kicking leg.

"Crippled Jimmy Thorpe,"
as the press named him.

[crowd cheering]

[Williams]
From the opening drive

Jim plays every minute
of the game,

offense and defense,

because that's the way
the game was played back then.

[Schefter]
He never got a break,

and he stayed out there
the entire time.

So here he is
running the football,

playing defense, kicking.

[Eisenberg]
There were no substitutions.

There was no bench.

The whole idea was
you don't come off the field.

It is a game of stamina.

If we look at the NFL today,
there's nobody who does

what Jim Thorpe did
back in the day.

We have to put ourselves
in the DeLorean and go back

and think about
what the game looked like

when Jim Thorpe was playing.

[Watson] What you would
be seeing back

in the beginning
of the 20th century

was a totally different game.

The rules are changing
every year back then.

[Eisenberg] There was no passing
in the beginning,

so that was considered
borderline cheating.

They didn't wear uniforms.
Very little padding.

They had what they called
team sweaters.

You couldn't tell who was
on what team.

Touchdowns for much
of that period were five points.

Field goals were four points.

The yard markers
were different.

The length of the field
was different.

There was
very little scoring,

and the vast majority
of plays

were just taking the ball
into the line.

It sounds like
a made-up universe,

like some kind of
bizarro version of football,

but that's very much
how football was played.

Jim Thorpe
was made for football

because he was great
at everything

and he loved
to hit people,

which was what football
was all about.

[Thorpe] I gave little quarter
when I played football,

and I never asked for any.

When I was hurt,
I bit my lip,

bandaged the injury
between quarters

and kept giving
what I had just received.

Even with his injured leg,

Jim still managed to kick two
field goals in the first half.

[crowd cheers]

[narrator]
Along with a field goal,

Harvard scores a touchdown.

And going into the half,
Carlisle is down 9-6.

In the second half
Carlisle comes roaring back,

and Jim's fingerprints
are all over the game.

He's running, he's kicking,

he's tackling,
all on a busted leg.

It gives you an idea

of how great of an athlete
he has to be.

Just from
a physical-toll standpoint,

to do what Jim Thorpe
was doing,

frankly, looking back on it,
it's like, it's crazy.

[laughs]
It is absolutely crazy.

[Williams] Carlisle scores
a touchdown.

Then Jim connects
for two field goals.

Suddenly,
the unthinkable happens.

Carlisle beats Harvard.

Years later,
Sports Illustrated

would point to this game
and Jim's performance in it

that would have earned
Jim the Heisman Trophy

had the Heisman Trophy existed.

There's something poetic

and there's some sense
of justice

in the way that Jim played,
because when he played

he played
for all Native peoples.

[Thorpe] Harvard,
the Crimson Tide,

was our big enemy that year.

Our victory
proved a great upset.

Sturdy old John Harvard

being knocked over
by the little Indian school

was a calamity
no one had looked for.

There's the famous headline,
"Thorpe Beat Harvard."

He was seen
as this amazing football player.

[Maraniss] Jim Thorpe had
probably the first

nationally recognized
brilliant game of his career.

Harvard was such a big deal
that all of

the newspapers
from New York and Boston

and Philadelphia
covered that game.

♪♪

[Hill] Jim Thorpe's
performance against Harvard

you kind of have to rank
right up there

with some of the greatest games
and performances

that you've seen
throughout history.

It's like
Kobe Bryant dropping 81,

Tiger winning the Masters
by 12 strokes,

Wayne Gretzky's
Game 7 magic over Toronto.

All those ridiculous
athletic accomplishments

that became the defining games
for the defining athlete,

that's what
that game was for him.

[narrator] Carlisle goes on
to have only one loss

that entire season

as Thorpe's star
continues to rise.

[narrator] Jim Thorpe makes
gridiron history,

scores 25 touchdowns,
198 points in a single season,

a combined record
never equaled.

[Jones] Jim gets named captain
of the Carlisle football team,

and Walter Camp, who's
the father of American football,

ends up naming Thorpe
to his All-American list.

[Williams] Jim Thorpe is
at the top of his game,

and yet he was
about to level up again.

[Thorpe]
The year 1912 came.

The magic year
of the Olympiad.

I trained as I've never trained
before or since.

In my heart,
I had known since 1909

that I would compete
in the game of games.

The modern Olympic Games
were created by a French lord,

Baron Pierre de Coubertin,
in 1896.

It was his vision

to build a festival
of international sport

that would
bring countries together

to sit higher
than our political differences.

He was inspired
after France had been crushed

in the Franco-Prussian War.

[Buford] He thought
that if nations could fight

on a field of sports, they'd get
it out of their system

and the world would be
a better place.

So he decided to revive
the ancient Greek Olympics

with the idea
that sports would take the place

of armed conflict.

So he created what was known
as the modern Olympics.

[cheers and applause]

♪

The first four Olympics were
not particularly successful.

There was no guarantee
that this idea of Coubertin's

was going to survive.

[Boykoff]
Baron Pierre de Coubertin

revived the Olympics
on a bed of contradictions.

The Olympics were supposed
to be for everybody,

but the baron excluded women.

He thought it was unseemly

to have women involved
in sport on any level.

And also he was classist.

I mean, he had a real class bias
in favor of aristocrats,

trying to exclude working people
from the Olympics

with a specialized definition of
amateurism from the very start.

The Olympics were
the ultimate example

of what amateurism and the
amateur ideal was in that era.

The idea was that
people should play sports

purely for their passion,
not for a paycheck.

That was considered
kind of lowbrow and unseemly.

No money could ever
cross your palm in any way,

or else
you were a professional.

Every athlete taking part
in the 1912 Olympics

had to sign a form
in which they had to promise

they had never accepted money
of any kind

in any connection
with sports.

It was formed and created
by and for

wealthy aristocratic athletes.

They didn't need money.

This version of the Olympics
is unrecognizable from today's.

[Wigglesworth] Today we are
accustomed to seeing

professionals from their sport,

in basketball or in hockey
compete at the Olympics.

Across just about
every sport,

Olympic athletes are
encouraged to go out

and get sponsors to help
them underwrite their training

in their competition,

in effect getting paid to
compete at that Olympic level.

That was not the case back in
Jim Thorpe's competitive days.

So you roll around into 1912,

which is the fifth Olympiad,
in Stockholm.

[Boykoff] The United States
Olympic team's journey

to even participate
in Stockholm

was quite the adventure
in and of itself.

When Jim Thorpe got to
the pier in Manhattan

and saw the SS Finland,

it was a sight unlike anything
he had ever seen before.

It was this floating paradise
of a sort,

the breadth of that ship,
where it was going,

to a world
that he'd never seen before.

And it's important
to remember

that this was
only a few months

after the sinking
of the Titanic.

So going on a transatlantic
journey was a little bit iffy.

♪

[Boykoff] They loaded on
thousands of pounds of food

for both the humans
as well as the horses

that were there
for the equestrian events.

They built
a special cork track.

There was a makeshift swimming
pool down in the lower deck.

Athletes could practice the
discus by throwing it overboard

and then pulling it back up
with a rope.

So there are all
these ingenious schemes

that allowed the athletes
to stay fresh

as they get ready
for the Olympic Games.

♪

There's a mythos
around Jim Thorpe

that he didn't train on the boat
going over to Sweden

and that he wasn't a person

who really dedicated himself
to his excellence.

I think the media
characterizations of Jim Thorpe

were very much that he didn't
have to work at his success.

[Maraniss] Why would people say
that Jim didn't train?

The same reason
why do so many sportswriters,

when they're defining
an African American athlete,

they'll just say
that they have natural talent

as opposed to actually working
at it, right?

Well, that was the way that
they could disparage Jim Thorpe.

He was just natural.
He didn't have to train.

But it's baloney.

When in reality Jim Thorpe

was actually
playing it smart.

He was tapering off
as the Olympic Games approached,

just like athletes do today.

[Thorpe] I was in the best
condition of my life.

I didn't work out strenuously,

contenting myself
with an occasional run

or trot about the deck,
as I felt ready for action

and didn't want to become stale
or overtrained.

I think the mythos around
Jim Thorpe's not training

is tied up in a mythos
around American Indians

in general, that we're not
hardworking, that we're lazy.

They were sort of
setting the stage

for his abilities
to be both adulated

and disrespected
at the same time.

[Watson]
When you look at just how

minorities are described
in the media

in the turn of the 20th century,

as much as their
accomplishments were celebrated,

there was still
that dehumanization.

Native American achievements
never could stand on their own.

They were always portrayed
through this lens of aggression.

[Watson] The words
that were used to describe them

made it very clear
that you are still deemed

as "less than" in society.

They were savages.

Violent.

[Watson] On a "warpath"
or "scalping" their opponent.

Those were words
that were used to describe

how they believed these
individuals lived their lives.

[Proudfit] The sportswriters

and the journalists of the time

frame and control the narrative.

And for Native people,

other people have
been representing us

and mischaracterizing us
since time immemorial.

[Jones] It was a way
of stripping Native Americans of

both their dignity
and their humanity.

[Boykoff]
At the time that Jim Thorpe

and the rest of the Olympic team
traveled to Stockholm,

there was a practice in place
on all ships of segregating,

in a lot of ways, by race.

The context is important
politically at that time,

1912 was a year
that Woodrow Wilson

was elected president,

and one of the first things
he did

was he racially segregated
the federal bureaucracy.

So African American people
had to use different bathrooms,

eat in different lunchrooms,
work in different spaces.

And that segregated culture
made its way

on board the USS Finland.

Jim and another
American athlete, Abel Kiviat,

who was Jewish,

were both put in steerage
on the ship

rather than with
the better quarters higher up.

Thorpe and his
fellow Olympians

who weren't
lily-white Olympians

who could stay in the top
accommodation on the top floor

had to grapple with a lot of
racism on the way to Stockholm,

but also more broadly in life.

[cheers and applause]

♪

[Wigglesworth] Jim Thorpe made
the Olympic team to compete

in both the pentathlon
and the decathlon,

two events that are
really widely regarded

as being among the most
difficult in the Games.

[narrator] Although Jim had
earned recognition back home,

he is far from being
the favorite.

Contenders like
Sweden's Hugo Wieslander

and even his own American
teammate Avery Brundage

are expected to dominate.

In the narrative
of Jim Thorpe,

Avery Brundage appears
a number of times as a nemesis.

Avery Brundage was
a terrible man.

He was known from the 1940s
through the 1960s and beyond

as "Slavery Avery"
for his racist beliefs.

In his personal papers,
he heaps praise on the Nazis,

calling them an "intelligent,
beneficent dictatorship."

And he was convinced
in his own mind

that he was going to win.

On July 7, 1912,

the competition begins
with the pentathlon,

a single-day challenge

featuring five
track and field events.

Jim comes out of the gates
soaring at the pentathlon,

almost literally.

He finishes first
in the long jump.

He then takes third
in the javelin

behind Sweden's
Hugo Wieslander.

One of Jim's most dominant
wins was in the pentathlon 200.

He left the competition
in the dust,

and he would finish
in a time of 22.9.

The specificity
of that number is significant

because 1912 marked
the first Olympics ever

that used electronic timers.

He follows that up
with another win,

coming in first in the discus,
easily defeating

his second-place
American rival, Avery Brundage.

[Jones] The final event
of the pentathlon

is the 1,500 meter,
the metric mile.

For the Sac and Fox people,

they had a traditional way
of looking at running,

allowing the Earth to move you
forward rather than your legs.

And that was the same kind of
conceptual energy

that Jim brought
to his running.

He was in his most comfortable,
safest space

when he was running
as fast as he could.

Jim Thorpe would win
his fourth overall event

and finish five seconds ahead
of his nearest competitor,

showing just how dominant he was
in those 1912 Olympics.

[Williams] So let's be clear.

Typically in a multi-discipline
event like the pentathlon,

the athlete who wins
generally does fairly well

in some combination
of the events.

[O'Brien] But Jim Thorpe
just didn't do well

in all the events.

Jim Thorpe won four out of

the five events
in the pentathlon.

That is
absolutely unheard of.

[narrator] He outclasses
both Sweden's Hugo Wieslander

and his own teammate,
Avery Brundage,

who unexpectedly fails
to win a medal.

Jim was not particularly
aware of Avery Brundage,

but Avery Brundage became
very aware of Jim Thorpe.

An American Indian was not
supposed to beat Avery Brundage.

With the nation's eyes
fixed on him,

Jim is about to embark
on the grueling decathlon,

squaring off against Brundage
in a showdown

that would reverberate
through the rest of his life.

[narrator] With Jim Thorpe's
outstanding performance

in the pentathlon having
already secured a gold medal,

another soon-to-be
famous American

also has high hopes
in the 1912 Olympics.

Believe it or not,
at the very same Olympic Games

where Thorpe was competing,

so was future
General George S. Patton.

And his event was
the modern pentathlon,

which is a military-themed event
that focused on running,

shooting, swimming,
fencing, and horseback riding.

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin
created the Olympics,

he had people like George Patton
in mind as participants.

Patton was the son
of a wealthy family,

had all the training required
at his fingertips to do well.

But George Patton
didn't do well at all.

In fact, he placed fifth.

[Maraniss]
In the swimming event,

he had to get pulled
from the pool.

And he claimed that he would
have won the sharpshooting,

except that his bullets the
judges said missed the target

actually went so cleanly
through the other bullets of his

that they couldn't see them.

[narrator] At the conclusion
of the modern pentathlon,

a brand-new event
is set to begin.

At the 1912 Olympics,

the decathlon was introduced
for the very first time.

You have to master
10 different events.

[O'Brien] The 100 meters,
the long jump,

the shot put, the high jump
and the 400 meters,

110-meter hurdles,
the discus,

the pole vault, the javelin,

and the metric mile --
the 1,500 meters.

The decathlon, in my opinion,
is the most difficult event

in the sport
of track and field.

[Jones] Jim is looking for
his second gold medal.

Meanwhile, Avery Brundage
is looking for redemption

after losing to Jim
during the pentathlon.

On Saturday, July 13, 1912,

the decathlon begins
with the 100-meter dash.

[Petrzela] On the first day
of the decathlon,

Thorpe finished in the top three
in all three events

and finished the day number one.

His rival, Avery Brundage,
on the other hand,

was in a distant 14th place.

[cheers and applause]

[Jones] Day two
begins with the high jump,

which Jim is heavily favored
to win,

but there's a problem.

When he went to compete,
his sneakers were missing.

There is some sense that
Avery Brundage was involved,

that he took the shoes
in an effort

to sabotage his performance.

Jim is then facing continuing
the decathlon without his shoes.

Jim, needing to compete,

went out and found a pair
of sneakers out of the trash.

So he and Pop Warner
jerry-rigged two shoes

that were different sizes.

Thorpe had to wear two pairs
of heavy socks on one shoe.

As an athlete,
you train for this one moment,

and when that moment comes,

you want everything
to be absolutely perfect.

Even in absolutely
perfect conditions,

competing in
the Olympic high jump

is a near impossible task.

And Jim did it with shoes
he found in the trash.

[narrator]
Thorpe jumps over six feet,

the only athlete
to reach that threshold.

Over six feet
with garbage shoes.

[Williams] Like most of

the high jump competitors
of his day,

Jim utilized
the straddle technique.

Decades later, in 1968,

Dick Fosbury revolutionizes
the sport

by utilizing
a different technique,

jumping backward over the bar.

This is the technique

that all Olympic high jumpers
utilize today.

[Thorpe] The Europeans
looked upon the red man

as a curiosity
of some sort.

It seemed
they were disappointed

that I didn't wear the warpaint
or the head feathers.

I decided I would live up to
their conception of the Indian,

so I broke out in a war dance

with accompaniment
of full-tone yells.

I think it was part of his
desire to really show that

even though
the boarding schools

attempted to strip Jim
of all of his culture

and turn him
into a white man,

they didn't take his identity
from him inside.

He was letting the world know
that he was a Native American.

[narrator] The next three events
see Jim extending his lead.

So the last great obstacle

between Jim Thorpe and
the Olympic gold medal in 1912

is the eighth event,
the pole vault.

[Thorpe] I considered myself
rather heavy for vaulting.

Before I sailed
for the Olympic Games,

my highest pole vault
was nine feet, six inches.

I knew I could do better,

but I was afraid
to attempt the higher mark

for fear the ash pole
might break.

The pole vault
is intimidating,

and it's one of
the most difficult events

in the decathlon.

It was the event
that kept me

off the 1992 Olympic team.

[announcer] He's just coming
to grips with the fact,

"I have no points
in this particular event.

I'm now not going to
the Olympic Games."

One misstep, one miscalculation,
and it's all over.

♪

[Jones]
Despite his concern,

Jim launched himself 10 feet,
eight inches into the air,

smashing his personal best

and keeping him on track
to win his second gold.

[narrator] It's at this point
in the competition,

having dropped to 11th place,
that Avery Brundage realizes

he has no chance
of defeating Thorpe.

He did something that he
would rue till his dying days,

and that was he dropped out
of the competition.

[Maraniss] Thorpe was creaming
Brundage by so much

that he quit after eight events.

He didn't even finish it
himself.

And probably there was
some measure of jealousy

for the rest of his life.

This would not be the last time

that Brundage runs afoul
of an Olympic champion.

Brundage went on
to a storied career.

He was a power broker
in Olympic circles.

He was passionate about the
spirit and ideals of amateurism.

[Jones] Brundage was
the Olympic Committee chairman

for the 1936 Games in Berlin.

[narrator] The undisputed star
of the competition

was Ohio State University
track star Jesse Owens.

[Jones] Just days
after Jesse Owens won gold,

Brundage came after him
as a professional athlete

and banned him
from amateur sports for life.

[narrator] Going into the final
event, the 1500 meter,

Jim's lead is nearly
insurmountable.

As soon as the race begins,
Jim is off,

and no one can catch him.

When Jim crossed the finish line
in the 1500,

he not only took a gold medal
but cemented his legacy

as one of the premier athletes
of his day.

Jim Thorpe would finish
in the top three

in eight of the 10 events.

He would win four
of those events outright.

And in the decathlon,
that's total dominance.

For me, Jim Thorpe's achievement
at the Stockholm Olympics

are a singular achievement.

I haven't seen anything
since then

that approaches that level
of greatness

in so many different sports.

"Citius, altius, fortius"
was the motto

of the modern Olympics.

It meant "faster, higher,
stronger."

And Jim Thorpe embodied
all of these.

[Wigglesworth]
His record stood for decades

and really set a new bar

for what we as athletes
can accomplish.

[Thorpe] At the close,
of the Olympic Games,

all the winners were marched
before the royal box

before the applauding
thousands.

[narrator]
Jim Thorpe's two gold medals

are the last Olympic medals
ever made from pure gold.

He's also awarded
two ceremonial trophies,

presented by Czar Nicholas
of Russia

and King Gustav of Sweden.

[Thorpe] King Gustav placed
a laurel wreath on my head

and, in English, said,

"Sir, you are the greatest
athlete in the world."

And the story is that Jim
responded, "Thanks, King."

Now, we don't know
if that actually happened.

I don't think he said it.
He says he didn't say it.

That was sort of representative
of Jim Thorpe, "the Indian,"

not knowing how to deal
with royalty.

It was all representative of the
way that Thorpe was idealized,

romanticized, and diminished
at the same time.

When Jim won the gold medals,
he was a sensation,

the first international
celebrity athlete.

He astonished the world:

this phenomenal performance,
and by an American Indian.

[Wigglesworth]
The whole point of the Olympics

is to compete
and represent your country.

Jim accomplished so much
representing the United States,

and he returned from the Games
celebrated as an American hero.

[narrator]
Jim even receives a letter

from President Howard Taft
saying Thorpe's qualities

"characterize the best type
of American citizen."

The irony is that at that time,

he was not even recognized
as an American citizen

because Native Americans
in this country

had not yet been granted
citizenship.

[Buford]
He returns home,

and Carlisle gives
a welcoming reception for him.

[Thorpe] We were met by the
leading citizens of the town.

There was hand-shaking,
congratulations, and speeches.

Jim was the center
of attention.

You couldn't open a paper
without reading about him.

They were throwing parades.
There was parties.

He was expected to make
appearances all across America.

[Buford] New York gives him
this ticker-tape parade,

with him at the front
in the first car, by himself.

And Jim, as all the media said
the next day, sat there,

scrunched down in the front seat

with a Panama hat over his face
and chewing gum.

Obviously not the happy hero.

And really,
that's true of most of his life:

that he was never searching
for glory or for fame.

He just loved sports.

In a lot of ways, Thorpe was
the first celebrity sports star.

[Hill] Back then,
the idea of a celebrity athlete

was completely foreign.

He's known all around the world.
There's no social media.

You think about how slow
information passed at that time,

and yet still everybody knew
about his athletic feats.

[Hill] He didn't have Gatorade
or Nike behind him,

pushing him out there
and making him a celebrity.

There's no media vehicle
driving it

beyond what he is accomplishing
at a time

where people who looked like him
weren't supposed to be famous

and athletes in general

were not really supposed to be
famous like that.

[narrator]
Jim Thorpe has ushered in

a new era of celebrity athlete,

but his career
is just getting started.

[narrator] After the fanfare
of the Olympics faded,

Jim Thorpe returns to Carlisle,

ready for another season
on the gridiron.

♪

[Buford]
The West Point game of 1912

has to be seen in light
of Jim's prior reputation:

the fantastic 1911 season that
made him a football phenomenon

and then the Olympic Games
of 1912.

So he comes to this game

between Carlisle,
the little Indian school,

and West Point,

that trains the future officers
of the American Army.

November 9, 1912:
the Army against the Indians.

You can't imagine
a football game

loaded with more meaning
than that.

♪

[Doyle]
The largest

and most famous battles
of the Great Plains

happened just prior
to the boarding-school era.

Jim Thorpe
and the Carlisle players

were a generation after
the warriors who were killed

at these famous battles, like
Battle of the Little Bighorn.

And just 20 years
before the Army-Carlisle game

was the massacre
at Wounded Knee.

There were over 200
innocent women, men,

and children killed
by the U.S. Army.

So going into the game
with West Point,

the Carlisle players
were highly motivated.

♪

[Thorpe]
We traveled to West Point,

the academy on the Hudson,
and met the Army,

rated the toughest,
cleverest team of the season.

Our chances to win
were held to be slight.

[Anderson] Before the game,
Pop Warner delivers a speech

that was unlike any
in the history of the sport

since or before.

Telling his players
what it could represent:

all of the payback for all
of the injustices and violence

that's been perpetrated on their
people for so many decades.

He would literally tell
his players,

"You are gonna be playing
against the sons

of the men who killed
your ancestors."

[Anderson]
"Now is the time for revenge.

We are going to prove

that we can play the white man's
game better than the white man.

Remember Wounded Knee."

I mean,
if that's not a motivator,

I'm really not sure what is.

♪

[Buford]
With the help of the media,

the public was primed
for this contest.

The Army players,
who were outfitted

in their black-and-gold
uniforms,

on average weighed 40 pounds
more and were four inches taller

than the Indian players,
adorned in their red sweaters.

To the fans in the stands
at West Point,

this game looked like it was
gonna be a total mismatch.

The Army team that day
was incredibly historic.

On the roster were four
future legendary generals

who would go on
to lead America in World War II.

In fact, it was called later
"the class the stars fell on"

because so many generals
were on that team,

including future president
of the United States

Dwight David Eisenhower.

This was a delicious matchup:

Pop Warner's bag of tricks
versus the Army kids

who had spent years
studying military strategy.

For Pop, this game
was particularly personal.

As a teen, he had applied to
West Point, and he was rejected.

[Williams]
From the opening kickoff,

this game is an absolute war.

Reports from the game talk about
the violent collisions

and the intensity.

While Jim dominates the game
in the first half,

Carlisle doesn't have a lot
to show for his efforts.

At halftime, they only lead 7-6.

[Anderson]
In the locker room at halftime,

Eisenhower huddled
with Leland Hobbs,

who would go on to lead
the 30th Infantry

in Western Europe
in World War II.

The two of them conspired
to deliver

what they called
"the old one-two."

Their mission:
send Thorpe to the sideline

if not the hospital.

[Maraniss] Eisenhower writes
about this later,

acknowledging that their goal

was to knock Jim Thorpe
unconscious.

Eisenhower would later recall
he and his fellow teammate,

in trying to pursue Jim,

Jim stepped aside and let them
collide with each other

and they were taken out
of the game.

Thorpe was a locomotive,
and they just couldn't stop him.

[Buford] Damon Runyon, who's
a wonderful American humorist,

was in the stands watching,
and he said,

"No one had to ask
who had had the ball

or who had made the play.

They knew
that it was Jim Thorpe."

[Anderson] Late in the game,
Thorpe caught a punt

at Carlisle's 45-yard line.

And immediately,
five Army defenders are on him.

In a blur of twists and turns
and stiff-arms,

Thorpe gets through
that first crush of defenders.

And over the next 50 yards

manages to repel every other
Army defender on the field...

♪♪

...scoring for Carlisle.

It was the most magnificent
football run that Pop Warner

and everyone else in attendance
had ever seen.

And even the cadets
on the sideline stand up

and applaud for Jim Thorpe.

[narrator] Thorpe and Carlisle
go on to soundly defeat Army.

It wasn't even close.

Carlisle ended up beating Army
that day, 27-6,

and Jim was by far
the best player on the field.

[Thorpe] I can say for the men
who made up the team,

of which I was proud
to be the captain,

I've never known a team
to function more perfectly.

The Indians in the crowd
rejoiced

over the fact that their people,
the Carlisle boys,

were thumping the white kids
at a game created by whites.

[narrator]
The 1913 Howitzer,

the West Point student
yearbook, sums up the match.

"The Carlisle Indians
gave us the worst defeat

we have had in years,

and the running of Thorpe
was by far the most wonderful

and spectacular ever seen
on our field."

[Thorpe]
It was a mighty battle

we fought that day
against the army.

Every loyal Red son of Carlisle
did his duty.

And I call it the greatest act
of athletic revenge

in American history.

[Buford] Jim Thorpe had the
great football season in 1912.

Pop Warner said life
was "juicy fat" for Jim Thorpe.

Like with so many stories
of celebrity athletes

and their meteoric rises,
it always seems

that when they're at the top
of their game,

along comes something to
just knock them off their perch.

In 1913, just a year
after his Olympic victory,

a scandal broke out.

[Thorpe]
This was the first rumble,

which was to attain
a thunderous crescendo

and hurl my records and hopes
from the heights into oblivion.

[Maraniss]
1912, for Jim Thorpe,

was the single greatest year
that any athlete ever had.

He won his gold medals
by the greatest margin ever

and then had this great
All-American football season

where they defeated Army.

I don't think you can find
any athlete

who did all of that in one year.

[narrator] But 1913 would prove
to be very different.

It all started with an article
in a small paper

in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Apparently, a journalist
was visiting a baseball coach

and saw a photograph
of Jim Thorpe behind him.

And the coach said, "Oh, yeah.
That was Jim Thorpe.

He used to play baseball
for me."

Even though it was
just the minor leagues,

because Jim was paid,

it technically made him
a professional.

And that violated
the amateur status

that you had to have to compete
in the Olympic Games.

Jim had signed that form
for the Olympics,

saying he had never accepted
any money,

that he was an amateur.

But he wasn't.

♪♪

[Maraniss] The story immediately
spread all over the country,

to the big papers in New York,
Philadelphia.

And so the question was,
"What do we do?"

Jim was busted and agonized
over what he was to do.

The only person that he
could rely on in this mess

was Pop Warner.

[Creek]
So when the scandal broke out,

Pop Warner acted
like he knew nothing about it,

which is impossible considering
he knew most of his players

played summer ball.

Pop sat down
and crafted a letter with Jim

to send to the American
Olympic Committee,

saying, in essence,
"I was just an Indian schoolboy.

I didn't know any better,

and I'm so sorry that I have
brought this on everyone."

[Thorpe]
All my life,

I have laid my cards face up
on the table.

I went to my room
and wrote the letter.

I found it the hardest

and cruelest I have ever
written in my life.

The letter that Jim Thorpe
ultimately submitted

to the International
Olympic Committee,

it put all the blame
on Jim Thorpe

instead of the responsible
adults that were around him,

including Pop Warner,

who gets off scot-free
in the depiction of this letter.

After all these years, the
only thing I wish to say now

is that I have reason
to believe

that some of the authorities
at Carlisle knew where I was

during 1909 and 1910
and what I was doing.

What they'd done essentially,
is hang Jim out to dry.

Pop Warner certainly was not
going to take the fall.

Nobody.

It was Jim who was at fault,
and he was the scapegoat.

I mean, Pop Warner...
It was such a deep betrayal.

I mean, after everything
that Jim Thorpe had done

to really give Pop Warner
his own separate legacy,

all the success
and the attention

he was able to bring him
as a coach,

for him to then just, at
a crucial moment in his life,

just totally stab him
in the back...

So they insisted
that he send back his medals.

[Maraniss]
The gold medals and trophies

were taken away from him.

It was an act
of enormous injustice.

His records would be stripped
from the Olympic record,

and the second-
and third-place winners

would be bumped up to first
and second,

and he would just be eliminated.

Hugo Wieslander,

the Swedish track star
who placed second to Jim,

was offered his gold medal when
Jim was stripped of the award.

But he said, "No.
This belongs to Thorpe."

Jim was busted.
It was over.

This incredible victory
in Stockholm

that made him the idol
of the whole world was over.

[O'Brien] As athletes,
we win or lose on the track.

Our performance is out there
on the field of play.

And it's the purest form
of sport.

There's a start line
and a finish line.

And they stole that
from Jim Thorpe.

I adopted
a fatalistic viewpoint

and considered the episode
just another event

in the Red man's life
of ups and downs.

Jim Thorpe losing his medals

was one of the great injustices
in the sports world of all time.

This injustice happened on the
firm foundation of hypocrisy.

It was actually not uncommon

for athletes to do
exactly what Jim did.

Most of the time,
athletes used a pseudonym

to protect their names and
to protect their amateur status.

There were so many pseudonyms
in the Eastern Carolina League

that they called it
"the Pocahontas league"

'cause everybody was named
John Smith.

Dwight Eisenhower,
the future president,

played under the name Wilson
in the Kansas State League.

Jim Thorpe played
under the name Jim Thorpe.

He never tried to hide it.

And the final hypocrisy

is that even the bylaws
of the Olympics in 1912

said that any challenge
to someone's amateurism

had to come within 30 days
of the Olympics.

The stories broke
six months later.

[Boykoff]
Because of the manner

in which the medals
were taken away,

it was a ding to his integrity.

It wasn't just
that people thought

he didn't deserve the metals.

It was that
he supposedly cheated

en route to getting the medals.

One of the prevailing
stereotypes of the day

was that Native Americans were
deceitful and untrustworthy.

And so I think it was easy
for American society

to label Jim that way.

[narrator] Regarding the
journalist who broke the story,

Thorpe later reflected...

[Thorpe] He wrote the story
that hurtled around the world

and toppled me from the heights
of amateur athletics.

He must have been proud
of his scoop.

I wonder if, in his happiness,

he ever thought what his story
would cost me.

[O'Brien] It's every athlete's
goal to win those major medals.

Those titles become part of you.
That's part of your identity.

Having them take away my titles,
having them take away my medals

would be like taking a piece
of me away physically.

Jim would tell one
of his friends,

"They took my medals away.

I won them fair and square,
and now I don't have them.

Now I don't have anything."

[Williams] As soon as Jim loses
his amateur status,

everyone assumes he's simply
gonna pursue a career

playing professional football.

Instead,
owners from a different sport

saw the value
in Jim's celebrity,

and offers began to flow in
from professional baseball.

[Eisenberg]
Jim is a commodity.

He's the best known athlete
in America,

and people are fascinated
by him.

[Maraniss] He was signed
by the New York Giants in 1913

because he was the most
famous athlete in the world.

And the Giants,
led by John McGraw,

knew that later that year,
they'd be traveling

around the world
with the Chicago White Sox,

bringing baseball
to the rest of the world.

The rest of the world knew none
of the famous baseball players.

They didn't know
Christy Mathewson.

They didn't know Ty Cobb.

They knew one athlete
from America: Jim Thorpe.

[Petrzela] When Thorpe signed
with the New York Giants

and went around the world
doing exhibition games,

he played baseball in places
including Japan, Egypt,

and even in front of the king
and queen in London.

On the voyage home,
they traveled on the Lusitania,

the same ship that,
just a few months later,

was sunk by a German U-boat
in World War I.

[Williams] Prior to signing
with the Giants,

Jim had played a couple of years
of minor-league baseball,

but this was primarily
with small, scrappy farm teams.

These were really sandlot games,

nothing compared to what
he'd experience in the majors.

[Creek]
The fact that he went

up to the professional league
so quickly,

he just didn't have time
to acquire the skills

needed to be a good ballplayer.

But folks in the front office
wanted him on the team

because they knew
they could bring the fans in

and sell tickets...
[crowd cheering]

...even though he really wasn't
ready for that experience.

Hitting is when you figure out
who really can play baseball

and who cannot.

When something's coming at you
90 miles an hour,

100 miles an hour, that ain't
easy to get around on.

And one of the biggest obstacles
for Jim Thorpe

was that he couldn't hit
a curveball.

[Eisenberg]
In fact, his batting average

in his first year with
the Giants was in the .160s.

Let me tell you.
I'm the sportswriter.

So I know if I've got Jim Thorpe
in front of me hitting .160,

I'm not being really nice.

The headlines are savage.

"Jim Thorpe is a joke.
Why is he in the major leagues?"

[Hill]
The criticism, the denigration

was there immediately

and I think really gave you
a window of a racial dynamic

where you build people up,
then,

when they get to the place
that you built them up,

you start chopping away.

It wasn't just like Joe DiMaggio
getting booed at a game.

No one was talking about
his race.

No one was talking about
his culture.

They would shout things at him
like "Dog soup,"

or they would do war whoops
to taunt him.

[crowd booing]

It was almost like all of Jim's
acceptance in society

and as a player hinged
on his performance.

If he wasn't winning,
the crowds weren't with him.

[Maraniss]
John McGraw, the manager,

doesn't let him play much.

He's a benchwarmer
for most of that first year.

[Buford] Huge problem was that
McGraw was a micromanager.

He liked to tell a player
every single step

of what he was supposed to do
when he was going up to bat.

Warner left Jim alone.
He rarely got in his way.

McGraw was the polar opposite.

And he and Jim quickly developed
an antipathy to each other.

[Petrzela] Jim struggled
a lot with baseball,

which didn't come so naturally
to him.

[Eisenberg]
But playing baseball,

by far the most popular sport
in America at the time,

that kept him in the spotlight.

As a football player, he's still
the star that he was in college,

and that got the attention
of the Ohio League.

[Creek] Jim's professional
football career began in 1915

with the Canton Bulldogs
in the Ohio League.

[Maraniss] The Ohio League
was the precursor

to the National Football League,
but it was nothing like it.

It wasn't even really a league.

Players could go from one team
to another week by week,

depending on who would
pay them more.

[Eisenberg]
No rules about scheduling.

No rules about contracts.

It was very loosely structured.

[Williams]
Most people at the time

were barely even aware
that pro football existed.

This was years before the advent
of the NFL.

Back then, college football
was considered the real draw.

[Schefter]
Boxing was more popular.

Horse racing was more popular.
Tennis, golf, baseball.

Everything was more popular
than football back in the day.

It may be shocking
for people to understand this,

especially seeing what football
has become today,

but, you know, it wasn't
some billion-dollar industry.

It wasn't powered
by shoe companies.

It wasn't supposed to be
this thing

where people were
supposed to get rich.

[Eisenberg]
The Canton Bulldogs

had one of the better teams
in the Ohio League,

and they offered Jim
$250 a game,

which is $7,000
in today's dollars.

It was unheard of to pay anyone
that amount of money.

It's the first time
there's money in football.

The salary was a headline.

Really, you can point to that

as a birth moment
of professional football.

It's Jim Thorpe signing
with the Canton Bulldogs.

Jim Thorpe helped put that sport
on the map.

[Eisenberg] Jim's best years
as a pro football player

were with the Canton Bulldogs.

He's a dominant player.

He's the best player
on every field.

Jim would go on to help them
become a dynasty.

He won four national
championships in five years.

This was the apex of Jim's
professional football career.

And they have an incredible
run until the early '20s

with him as coach and player.

People come to see him play.

He encourages other players,
like Knute Rockne,

to come and play with him
or against him.

They just wanted to be
on the same field with him

because he was so revered.

A professional game
at Massillon, Ohio.

I was with the Canton Bulldogs.

And Rockne, he slipped through
and tackled me

for a couple-yard losses,
and I said, "Well, Rock,

you're doing fine work."

But I said, "Listen.

All these people up here in the
stands come to see old Jim run.

How about letting old Jim run?"

He says, "Well, you big rascal,

if you think you can do it,
let's see you do it."

So the next time
I carried the ball around,

I hit him in the side
of the head with my knee

and my hip and my elbow
and knocked him out.

So I run on down
for a touchdown.

I walked up to him
and I said, "Thataboy, Rock.

You let old Jim run,
didn't you?"

[narrator] Even while playing
for the Canton Bulldogs,

Jim Thorpe never gives up
on baseball.

After marrying Iva Miller
in 1913 and starting a family,

he dedicates himself to honing
his baseball skills,

driven by his relentless
competitive spirit.

[Buford]
Other sports came easily to him.

But baseball didn't,
and he had to work hard at it.

His journey takes him
through stints

with the Milwaukee Brewers,
the Cincinnati Reds,

and a return
to the New York Giants,

until he's traded once more
in 1919.

He's struggling for many years

until he finally gets his chance
in Boston for the Boston Braves.

And for that one year,

he showed that he really did
have baseball talent.

He led the National League
in hitting for most of the year.

He was up there in the weekly
scores of batting averages,

with Ty Cobb leading
the American League.

[Williams] To put the last year
of Jim's baseball career

in some context:
Jim hit .327 that year.

Ken Griffey Jr., by contrast,
who's considered to be

one of the greatest
baseball players of all time,

the best batting average he had
in any season: .327.

♪♪

So he becomes now known
as the iron man of sports.

He can play anything.

All year long,
he's playing both sports.

So now we give athletes
a heck of a lot of praise

if they just play two sports.

Bo knows baseball.
[rock music playing]

♪♪

Bo knows football.

Of course we remember
Bo Jackson being

a hell of a football player,
a hell of a baseball player.

Deion Sanders was really good
at football and baseball.

I'm hard pressed to come up with
too many more after that.

[Hill]
And nine times out of ten,

if we're keeping it real,

they're not equally good
at both of those sports.

[announcer]
Here's Usain Bolt.

We'll get an early look
at his speed.

It's usually one
they're great at,

and the other one...all right.

But Jim, he excelled at
football, baseball, and track.

He's not just
a three-sport athlete.

You add up
all the decathlon events,

Jim was a 12-sport athlete.

[Schefter]
Jim Thorpe came as close

to mastering all his trades
as anybody else ever has.

Literally we won't see
a Jim Thorpe ever again.

There's never gonna be
an athlete

who's gonna be good
at that many things.

[narrator]
Jim's talent and star power

make him the perfect figurehead
to launch a new league.

Pro football in the early 1900s
was the Wild West.

They knew that it's got to be
regulated somehow.

So some of the owners
get together in 1920 in Canton,

and they sit down
in a Hupmobile auto showroom,

and they form a league

that will eventually be
the National Football League.

And they unanimously elect Jim
as the first president

of that brand-new league,
knowing that his name means

that every newspaper
in the country

will cover this new league

and thereby bring some respect
and attention to this sport,

which is why the Pro Football
Hall of Fame is in Canton.

[narrator] A shrine
to the memory of the greats

of professional football
is dedicated in Canton, Ohio.

It was here that
the National Football League

was founded in 1920.

No man has ever touched
the record of Jim Thorpe

as an all-around athlete.

[Eisenberg] It's a straight line
from that meeting

to the multi-multibillion-dollar
colossus that the NFL is today.

He really created that sport.

[crowd cheering]

[O'Brien]
Jim Thorpe had spent a decade

performing at the highest levels
of athletic achievement.

But that's a decade
of no off days

and a decade of putting
that punishment on your body.

[Eisenberg] He's in his 30s,
and he has lost a step.

And he will continue
to lose a step.

His decision to be
a two-sport athlete

had a huge impact
on his family life.

In baseball,
you're gone for six months.

And then, his offseason,
he's playing football.

Also gone.

He was rarely home.

Jim and Iva divorced,

and he then married
Freeda Kirkpatrick,

and they had four boys.

It just gets harder and harder
and harder.

[Proudfit] In an effort
to provide for his family,

he started to be
more and more absent.

[Eisenberg] He went
from the Canton Bulldogs

to a team in Cleveland in 1921.

And then he coached an
all-Indian team, Oorang Indians,

which was really
an advertisement

for a guy that owned dogs.

[Thorpe]
We traveled through Ohio,

picking up games at random
without a schedule,

football gypsies.

I had traveled
a long and windy road,

over hills and valleys.

It seemed in this era
of my life,

I had slipped into the valley.

[Eisenberg] In 1925, the
New York Giants brought him in.

They paid him by the half

because they weren't sure
that he could finish a game.

And it didn't go well.
They cut him after four games.

He was fading.

As Jim Thorpe's career
was on the decline,

there was a star
coming into the NFL.

[narrator]
Red Grange ,

the fabulous Galloping Ghost
of Illinois.

[Eisenberg]
He was just an incredible, fast,

elusive runner, and it just
fascinated the football public.

[Grange] Now, I played one game
against Jim Thorpe.

He was 40 years old,
and you could still see

that he had been
a great football player.

He was big, and he was strong,
and he loved it.

He loved that contact.

He loved to run into people,
and that's what it takes.

[Proudfit] Not only did Jim
continue to play football,

but in an effort
to recapture his name

and his significance
in the sports world,

he started playing basketball.

[Thorpe]
I organized teams,

played itinerant games,
and eked out a living

from those who paid their
admissions to see Thorpe

and his unheralded
farewell tour.

♪

Every athlete's sports life
comes to an end,

and Jim Thorpe's came to an end
in 1928.

I was now 41 years old.

The years had put weight
on my frame

and taken fire from my feet.

Football was my love.

And now was I saying goodbye
to the game

of which I felt I had become
a part?

Later, many sportswriters
and commentators

would say that Jim had played
too early,

before agents, testimonials,
and money,

big-time money,
enter into the world of sports.

♪

You have Babe Ruth.

You have Red Grange.

Jack Dempsey is a fighter.

The bonanza came
after Jim's time.

Athletes made a lot of money.

♪♪

Jim Thorpe struggled monetarily
after retirement.

No question about it.

[Buford] Ironically,
the greatest athlete of all

couldn't benefit in the way that
other athletes could benefit.

[Boykoff] There was a lot
of anti-Indigenous racism

at that time.

It was difficult to find
lucrative employment.

So there are 25 years

where he was constantly looking
for a job.

He was a bar owner,
a greeter at bars.

Jobs were scarce,

and I had made the mistake
in my life

of devoting all my time to
athletics, overlooking the fact

that someday I might need
a business calling

upon which to lean
in days such as these.

[Buford] In the 1930s --
this is the Depression --

thousands of has-been athletes
went out to Hollywood.

♪

It was seen as a place
where they might work.

With the advent
of the sound pictures, talkies,

the Western had come back
into favor.

You could have
the horses galloping

and the rifles crackling.

And so Jim, as well as hundreds
if not thousands of Indians,

also went out to Hollywood.

He thought he could make his way
as an actor.

♪♪

[Buford] When he first arrived
in Hollywood,

he couldn't find any work,
and he was just doing odd jobs.

I took a shovel
and worked on the site

of the new county hospital,
loading dirt into trucks.

I was paid $4 a day.

I had worked there
only a few weeks

when newspaper reporters
found me.

They posed me with a pick
and shovel,

and the papers carried
the picture.

You know, the famous Jim Thorpe
is now digging ditches.

A far cry from the day

when I stood beside King Gustav
of Sweden

with my arms loaded
with trophies.

As soon as the word spread that
Jim Thorpe was digging ditches,

it became this enormous
symbolic event.

Photos went out to
every newspaper in the country.

[Doyle] The sense was this man
had fallen so far.

And I think it's easy
to perceive it that way,

but I don't think that he saw it
that way.

Jim Thorpe was not a person
who felt sorry for himself.

He was a hardworking man,

and he saw work like that
as an opportunity.

[Buford]
And the studios heard about him,

and that's what started
the studio career.

And he realized that his name
had a certain currency

in the movies.

People could put
"and also starring Jim Thorpe"

or "Jim Thorpe appearing."

He found that jobs came to him
because of that.

♪

Jim's big-screen debut
was in Battling Buffalo Bill,

where he played
a Cheyenne warrior.

He was also a pirate
in Captain Blood.

He played a native in King Kong,

and he was in Always Kickin',
where he played himself.

Listen, boys.

If the laces are not up
on receiving the ball

from the center,
don't take too much time.

Adjust the ball
on a step forward and kick.

But you had very limited roles
for Native Americans who spoke,

so he was relegated to play
generic characters

who had few lines, if any.

-No. More.
-That's all you get.

Hudson Bay pay more.

[gunshot echoes]

[Proudfit] He was asked
to wear a headdress,

speak in generic, stereotypical
Hollywood Native speak.

In spring,
Big Jim Foster's cabin burn.

Furs gone.

But he was also
really frustrated

that most of the roles
during this period of time

were going to non-Indians
playing Indians.

These are non-Indigenous
actors in war paint,

doing buffoonish
characterizations

of what they thought
Native Americans behaved like.

In 1926, a group called
the War Paint Club was formed,

and its goal was to ensure
that Hollywood would hire

Native actors
to play Native people in films.

Jim lent his voice and celebrity
to this cause.

Jim's advocacy for his fellow
Indians was so strong and moving

that they called him ahkapanata,
which was a Sac and Fox term

which essentially meant
"caretaker."

[narrator]
After years of advocating

on behalf
of all Native Americans,

the final act
of Jim Thorpe's life

finds him advocating for himself

as he fights to win back
his Olympic medals.

[narrator]
In Oklahoma,

members of 15 Indian tribes
stage a colorful celebration

in honor of a famous
Indian athlete, Jim Thorpe,

who joins the dances himself.

In 1950, The Associated Press
took a poll of sportswriters

of the greatest athlete of the
first half of the 20th century.

Jim Thorpe won by a mile over
Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens

and Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb
and Jack Dempsey.

It was Jim Thorpe.

So he was back
in the limelight again,

and it prompted the making of
the Warner Bros. biopic in 1951,

Jim Thorpe: All-American.

[narrator] Jim Thorpe Week then
reaches its climax in a parade.

Celebration lasts
far into the night,

as Oklahoma hails
the motion-picture life story

of the man recently voted
the outstanding athlete

of the last half-century,
Jim Thorpe: All-American.

The director was Michael Curtiz,
who had directed Casablanca.

The star was Burt Lancaster,

a great movie star,
a good athlete.

Sir, you are the greatest
athlete in the world.

Thank you, Your Majesty.

[Maraniss] Very popular.
It was on all the big screens

and the outdoor theaters
around the country.

[Buford] Jim Thorpe was
sort of plaintive, you know?

He said, "I get a funny feeling
watching Burt play me."

He said, "I don't think I was
ever as handsome

as Burt Lancaster."

[Jones] Even though Jim was back
in the public eye,

the recognition that he really
wanted was from the Olympics.

[narrator]
In the later years of his life,

Jim works tirelessly,

petitioning to have
his Olympic medals restored.

Contemporary account
after contemporary account

talked about how Thorpe was
totally disconsolate

by losing those medals.

He wanted them back
more than anything.

In one plea to the president
of the Amateur Athletic Union,

he writes...

[Thorpe]
You will have the knowledge

that you made an old
American Indian a happy man.

And when I go
to the happy hunting ground,

my blessings will be upon you.

[narrator] However,
he is rejected time and again.

[Hill] I mean, it was something
that he never got over

and really loomed over him
the rest of his life.

[Buford] Jim Thorpe
did not have a good heart,

and he'd had heart attacks.

In 1953, Jim Thorpe had
one last heart attack and died.

♪♪

His passing prompts an
outpouring of support

from many, including
former collegiate adversary

and newly elected president
of the United States

Dwight Eisenhower.

"I learned with sorrow
of the death of my old friend.

I personally feel
that no other athlete

has possessed his all-round
abilities in games and sports."

[Watson] In his death,
there's a groundswell of support

from the public
to return his medals.

People grabbed on to him
almost like a folk hero

as the man wronged
by the big guys.

They wanted some vindication
for Jim.

[Maraniss] His family had fought
for them over the years.

Various other athletes
were pushing for it.

The campaign, which went on for
decades and decades and decades,

was thwarted over and over again
by Avery Brundage,

the competitor who had lost
to Jim in the Olympics.

Over the years, Brundage had
risen through the ranks

to become president

of the International
Olympic Committee.

Throughout Brundage's tenure
as a leader

within the Olympic movement,

he continued to not reinstate
the honors

that Thorpe had earned.

As long as Avery Brundage
was alive, it would not happen.

It chugs along like that
until Avery Brundage is out.

He retires.
He's gone.

With Thorpe's nemesis
out of the way

and continued support
for his cause,

including from
President Gerald Ford,

justice ultimately prevails.

Jim's medals were restored
to him 30 years after his death,

in 1982.

But Jim Thorpe is listed
as co-winner

with the second-place finishers

in the pentathlon
and decathlon,

an injustice that stands
until 2022.

[Muir]
Long considered one of the most

controversial decisions
in sports...

A resolution
in what some are calling

the first international
sports scandal.

After more than 100 years,

Jim Thorpe has been reinstated
as the sole winner

of the 1912 Olympic pentathlon
and decathlon in Sweden.

This day has certainly been a
long time coming for Jim Thorpe.

It took 110 years for justice
to finally be done.

In 2024, nearly 80 years
after his death,

Jim Thorpe is
posthumously awarded

the Presidential Medal
of Freedom...

Jim Thorpe,
a one-of-a-kind champion.

Not just the greatest
ballplayer.

The greatest athlete
of all time.

...the nation's highest
civilian honor.

Jim Thorpe's legacy
is astounding

when you look back on it.

No one has carved the path
that he carved.

To be a dominant
football player,

to be a Major League Baseball
player,

to be an Olympic gold medalist:

To do all those things
in one athlete's life,

he is in a category by himself.

No one has replicated that,

and I daresay we'll never see
another.

[O'Brien] Jim Thorpe is a giant
in the sport of track and field.

I was in the Olympics
80 years after Jim Thorpe,

and even though almost a century
of history separates us,

he had a big impact on me.

[Doyle] This is an athlete
that really dominated

the first half
of the 20th century,

but also he represents so
much more than just an athlete.

[Buford] He became
an inspiration for any outsider.

Anyone who felt excluded
from the American mainstream,

the American elite
was keeping them out of sports,

Jim Thorpe became their man.

[Maraniss]
Jim Thorpe was a survivor.

He endured
all of the difficulties

that Native Americans endured

during the 19th
and early 20th century.

What he represents
is the perseverance

of Native peoples
in this country.

He represents the very height,

the very top
a person could achieve.

His legacy is that other Native
people want their children

and future generations
and even themselves,

their own generations,
to match that.

[Proudfit] Perseverance
was in everything that he did.

If you think about
Jim Thorpe's life,

he's not just a tragic figure
of American history.

He's not just another
sad Indian.

He was the greatest athlete
of all time

and one of the greatest
Americans who ever lived.

♪