Thorpe has been called by many the greatest athlete of the twentieth century. In the first modern Olympics, in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1912, he won both the pentathlon and decathlon by wide margins and was the star of the games. He was welcomed back to the United States with a celebratory ticker-tape parade on the streets of New York.
Yet his medals were stripped from him after he was accused to having played semiprofessional baseball prior to the 1912 Olympics. He died in poverty in 1953; his Olympic medals were reinstated in 1982 after a long battle by his family. In this age of celebrity athletes, few Americans know about the first star athlete of the twentieth century and his American Indian identity.
