Path lit by lightning, p.21
Path Lit by Lightning, page 21
Several other runners, including Tatu Kolehmainen, brother of Hannes, the Flying Finn, dropped out at about the same point that Lázaro collapsed. Tewanima kept pushing to the end and finished in sixteenth place. But what happened to Shizo Kanakuri? No one knew at the time. Kanakuri, who had reached the Olympics with great hopes as one of the marathon favorites after a ten-day train journey across Asia and Europe, failed to finish the race, but no Boy Scouts or official race-tenders saw him along the last third of the course. Only years later did the story come out. He had stumbled and collapsed near Tureberg, where a family holding a party found him, took him into their garden, revived him with orange juice, and sent him on his way. But Kanakuri was so embarrassed by his incomplete performance that instead of going back on the course he caught a train to Stockholm and left for Tokyo the next day without telling a soul. Eventually, he did return to the Stockholm marathon course, though by then many of those who had started the race with him were long gone. It was on March 20, 1967, when Swedish officials invited him back to finish the race, and he did just that, running the unfinished leg of the marathon at age seventy-five. His recorded time was 54 years, 246 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, and 20.3 seconds.
The stadium crowd was buzzing with news of Lázaro’s death on Monday morning when Thorpe returned for the final three events in the decathlon. Two more athletes had dropped out, the field now down to sixteen. The first test was the pole vault, the event Jim had practiced the least, fearful he might break the pole and injure himself. But with only his teammate Mercer specializing in the event, Thorpe’s modest vault of 10.6 feet was good enough to tie for third, allowing him to lengthen his overall point lead, which was not endangered in any case. Next came the javelin, which none of the Americans had much experience throwing. While Mercer and Donahue dropped from medal contention with meager throws that were thirteenth- and fourteenth-best, Thorpe, in this case relying on pure unpracticed athletic skill, managed a fourth-place throw of 150 feet. Avery Brundage did not even try, dropping out before the javelin. In his unpublished memoir, he offered this explanation: “I was not quite ready for Olympic competition and did not do very well. Moreover, in the decathlon I committed an inexcusable error which I was to regret ever after. I was furious at my poor performance and did not even enter the final event, the 1500 meter run which I hated. This failure to finish the competition was unforgivable.”
There is much to analyze in that self-assessment. Brundage got his own history wrong. The records show he dropped out before the javelin, not the 1,500. He was correct to say he performed poorly. After eight events he was in sixteenth place, almost two thousand points behind countryman Thorpe. His use of the words inexcusable and unforgivable reflected a sporting ethos he displayed later as an Olympic potentate, but only when assessing the deeds of others. With Brundage, it was all about moral posturing. He would write later that he came away from Stockholm with his conversion to Pierre de Coubertin’s religion complete. He was now a believer in “Olympic noblesse oblige” where there was “no political chicanery,” where “good sportsmanship and fair play prevailed,” where “violations even of the spirit of the rules were followed by public disgrace.” But there was more to it than that.
No political chicanery? Brundage also came away from Stockholm having made two important new friends in the German delegation, pentathlete Karl Ritter von Halt and fervent Olympic organizer Carl Diem, and would form an unholy alliance with them twenty-four years later in promoting the 1936 Nazi games in Berlin and spewing pro-Hitler and antisemitic propaganda. His notion of noblesse oblige had an autocratic stain. If he could not impose his will on competitors as an athlete, he would seek to control them, contain them, and judge them in other ways when he had the authority to do so. For decades thereafter, as he enriched himself and his aristocratic cronies through his Olympic connections, he portrayed himself as the symbol of athletic honor and arbiter of amateur purity, disparaging athletes of far lesser means who saw sports as a way up and out, not as a leisurely upper-class recreation. He was no match for Jim Thorpe inside the stadium in Stockholm. Thorpe was faster and stronger and could jump higher. But when they clashed decades later, off the field, over issues of fairness and honor, Brundage had all the power.
With the field down to twelve for the 1,500 meters, Thorpe held such a substantial lead that the only way he could lose was if he withdrew. Instead, he ran. There were three heats, four men each. As the Olympic Games of Stockholm 1912 Official Report described: “The third and last heat was Thorpe’s, who ran the distance as good as alone, the rest of the field being a long way behind the leader.” His time was the best of all the heats, 4 minutes 40.1 seconds. It could be said that Thorpe performed the entire decathlon as good as alone, the field being so far behind. Olympic officials, spectators, fellow athletes—all were stunned by what they had witnessed. “As Thorpe went from one strenuous event to another, never seeming to feel fatigue, the wonder and admiration of the onlooking athletes found expression in what came to be a stock phrase, ‘Isn’t he a horse!’ ” Pop Warner later recalled. Thorpe finished 700 points ahead of the nearest competitor with 8,412 points, a record score. With that win, Jim had provided the United States with six points, and when added with Lewis Tewanima’s two points for the silver in the 10,000, Pop Warner’s boys from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School—two athletes who were not recognized as citizens—provided more points for America than any other educational institution.
* * *
AT FIVE THAT afternoon, Thorpe took his place with the United States delegation as they marched into the stadium for the awarding of prizes and trophies. The top American officials, Colonel Thompson and James E. Sullivan, sated by two weeks of social functions on land and on the colonel’s yacht, marched at the front in formal dress and silk hats, busting with pride that their American boys had bested all nations with a total of 85 points. The athletes behind them were a hodgepodge spectacle, most wearing their white hats, some in track uniforms or warm-up suits, others in finer outfits. Jim had found time to put on a black suit and vest with a white shirt and dark tie. The suit pants billowed in descent and bunched as they met his shoes, appearing a size too big. Once on the greensward infield, he joined gold medalists who formed a semicircle a respectable distance from the rostrum where King Gustav V handed out medals and trophies to the winners. The king looked jauntily regal in his frock coat, cane, and top hat. He was accompanied by four formally attired attendants who summoned the winners forward one by one for brief visitations and assisted with the handling of the precious merchandise.
Thorpe was brought forward twice, first for his win in the pentathlon. He approached from the left and met the king’s extended arm for a handshake from above that was so enthusiastic it pulled Jim forward and almost off-balance. While the king stood firm, cane dangling from his left hand, Jim planted his right leg in the ground and bent his left leg, readjusting his balance as he had done countless times on the football field. With his hat in his left hand, he bent in a polite if awkward bow, almost a curtsy, before looking up to receive his gold medal. The king then patted an oak wreath snugly onto Thorpe’s head before sending him away with a quick series of handclaps and a sly smile. Jim retreated with another humble half-bow without taking the Swedish King’s Challenge Prize Trophy, a three-foot bronze bust so bulky it took two straining attendants to place it behind on the rostrum. It would reach Jim later.
Soon Thorpe was called back for decathlon honors, and the stadium came alive with whistles and cheers. The handing over of the gold medal came first this time, followed by a firm handshake from above and the placement of the oak wreath on Jim’s head. An attendant stepped between them with the Emperor of Russia Challenge Prize Trophy, a thirty-pound silver replica of a Viking ship, more artfully designed than the pentathlon bust, but smaller and easier to handle. With his right hand touching the trophy, the king helped steer it toward Jim, pointed at him, and said a few words. There stood Jim, hat in one hand, gold medal in the other, neither hand free to take the trophy until he reacted quickly by casually stuffing the medal in his right coat pocket. He then switched his hat from left hand to right, took the trophy with his left hand while bracing it with the hat hand, retreated one step, nodded twice in appreciation, and said something in reply to the king, who pointed first at the trophy, then to his rear right, a gesture revealing the appropriate exit for Jim, who walked away carrying the Viking ship. All in about fifteen seconds.
What transpired between Thorpe and King Gustav V during those fifteen seconds would become a defining scene of Jim’s life. The accepted story goes that the king greeted Thorpe in English by saying, “You, sir, are the most wonderful athlete in the world.” Or, in a slightly revised version, “You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world.” To which Jim replied either “Thanks, King” or merely “Thank you.” The world press—for understandable reasons, combining superlative praise with democratic jocularity—preferred the version that had Jim replying with the informal “Thanks, King.” Thorpe himself in retelling the story later would insist that he was not flippant and responded only with “Thank you.”
In any of those renditions, the essential message from the king was the same. Jim was the best athlete in the world. But the question arises: How is this conversation known to have happened? Was it a reasonable if slightly imprecise description of what was said—or was it myth?
There were no reporters within earshot, no audio recordings that captured the repartee of the medal transactions. Only newsreel, in this case silent film, and examinations of that film fail to provide conclusive evidence. The king and his court were not interviewed in the hours after the event, nor was Thorpe. Because of the time difference, evening newspapers ran stories about the ceremony that day, morning newspapers the following day. Thorpe was on the front page of some, the top of the sports page on most. In almost every report he was called the greatest athlete in the world or the greatest athlete the world had ever seen—but not in quotes from the king. The praising quote from the king did not appear in the New York Times, New York Herald, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Detroit Free Press, or Los Angeles Times. One place it did appear was the Brooklyn Times, which wrote: “When Jim Thorpe stepped up to receive his prize, the King said: ‘You, sir, are [the] most wonderful athlete in the world.’ ” The quote could have been taken from a wire report—but then, why was it nowhere to be found in hundreds of other papers that carried wire stories from Stockholm?
Within a week, the quote had made its way into the culture, repeated in newspapers throughout the country. Whether the conversation occurred is immaterial to the indisputable fact that Thorpe was the greatest and most wonderful athlete in the world. It is relevant in a different sense, in understanding the mystique that enshrouded him during his lifetime and after. He was now a mythic figure. As stories about him were shaped and reshaped in the public imagination, separating myth from fact became ever more difficult. The myth grew even as the reality of his life became rawer. Or maybe the myth grew precisely because of that reason.
Jim toted the Emperor of Russia chalice to the ship himself; the enormous bust also made it to the SS Finland unbroken, and both were put in the care of Pop Warner, who along with his Carlisle boys had returned to the floating dormitory. Although this was never explained to Thorpe, neither trophy was meant to be his forever; the Olympic plan was for them to be traveling trophies, staying with Jim for at least four years and then being handed off to whoever next won the events. The equivalent of how professional hockey later treated its Stanley Cup. Pop’s plan was to put them on display at the Carlisle school, magnificent evidence of the world-class abilities of the Indians. He would place a $10,000 bond on their safekeeping. The scene aboard ship that night was raucous. With medal events over, Silent Mike Murphy’s rigid training rules were relaxed. “And for the first time since they embarked in search of Olympic glory [the athletes] were allowed to eat what they pleased and smoke as many cigars and cigarettes as they desired,” reported the Associated Press. Jim and his pals spent the night drinking and making merry aboard ship and at nearby bars.
The next day, for the enjoyment of Swedish fans, the Americans put on a baseball exhibition, splitting into western and eastern squads. Both sides put in claims for Jim, the West because he grew up in Oklahoma, the East because of his affiliation with Carlisle. He played outfield for the East and went one for two at the plate. Thorpe and his teammates might have been feeling the effects of a night on the town, but few noticed. The East won, 6 to 3. Curious athletes from other nations came to Östermalm field to watch the American national pastime, according to the AP. “The foreigners figured that in some mysterious way baseball must be accountable for the wonderful proficiency in athletics shown by the representatives of the Stars and Stripes in the stadium.”
That night, their last in Stockholm, something happened that added to the Thorpe legend, a mythology that usually had two sides to it, one positive, one negative, or condescending and racist. What happened that night was that someone boarded the ship to invite Jim to a special gathering. For days thereafter, as Olympic officials and members of the press were sailing home aboard the SS Finland, and again after they had landed back in New York, they would weave the story into a negative and racist myth.
Version one was written by a reporter for the International News Service and appeared in Hearst newspapers throughout the United States. It said that on the day they were to leave:
the king of Sweden sent an equerry aboard to take James Thorpe, the half-breed Indian who won the pentathlon and decathlon, to the Royal Palace and that Thorpe refused to go. This was probably the first time in history that an American or anyone else has refused a royal command of this character, especially as it was reported that the king wished to give Thorpe a decoration for his wonderful work winning both events, which stamped him as the greatest all-around athlete in the world. When the gold-braided and bedecked equerry boarded the ship to give Thorpe the royal summons, the Indian looked sheepish for a moment, tried to dig his toe into the deck, pondered the matter deeply and finally replied: “I guess I won’t go.” Commissioner Sullivan, who learned of the incident after the Finland sailed, was horrified at such a breach of etiquette and remarked regarding the Indian: “Let us hope his majesty has a sense of humor.”
Version two was transmitted by the Associated Press several days later from New York, borrowing from and embellishing version one:
An amusing incident of the Olympic games is being told at the athletic clubs here. It is said that shortly before the Finland was to leave Stockholm an equerry in uniform came aboard and demanded an interview with Thorpe, whose record at the stadium gave him the honor of being considered the best all-around athlete in the world. “The king has heard of your success,” said the equerry, “and would like to see you at the palace in order to congratulate you” “Ugh! Ugh! I don’t know much about kings,” replied the big Indian, as he grinned bashfully. “Offer him my regards and tell him I can’t get away.”
Both versions perpetuated the stereotype of Thorpe as an uncivilized Indian. The perpetrators took one thread of fact and wove it into a fabrication that fit their perceptions. In fact, King Gustav was preoccupied that night with a gala at the royal palace attended by foreign diplomats, the Swedish cabinet, and officials from the world’s Olympic delegations. His guests dined in the great hall, then were ushered into a reception room where the walls were graced with Gobelins tapestries from Paris and the picture windows provided stunning views of the harbor, where lights from hundreds of small boats twinkled and a fireworks display illuminated the dusky sky. The king had other things on his mind than Jim Thorpe.
Ralph Craig, the Detroit sprinter and fellow double–gold medalist, later debunked the stories, telling Thorpe’s first biographer and lifelong defender Robert W. Wheeler that when they returned to the ship that night there was “a man waiting at the gangplank with a message for Jim. It was an invitation from a Russian admiral requesting Jim’s presence on his battleship. Since the hour was late, Jim declined the offer.” Craig was closer to the truth, though inaccurate in a few particulars, according to Thorpe’s version. “An American correspondent who had come over with us sent out a story that the King of Sweden had invited me to the palace and I had declined,” Thorpe wrote. “This is not true. In the first place, the King didn’t extend such an invitation and had he I would have been happy to have accepted. The newspaper apparently based his story on another invitation that I did refuse. A group of Swedish naval officers partying on a boat at anchor in the port sent word to me by courier in a small boat that they would like me to join them. I declined as I didn’t want to be gazed upon as a curiosity.”
That concern fit with Jim’s sensibility, his shyness, and unease about how the world perceived him, but his newfound stature made one thing unavoidable. He would be gazed upon as a curiosity for the rest of his life.
10 Near Custer’s Tomb
IT WAS ONLY FOOTBALL, NO one died, and football players on game day rarely contemplate history or much of anything beyond blocking and tackling and a coach’s barking and maybe a girlfriend in the stands. But the ghosts of history hovered. The date was November 9, 1912. The place was the United States Military Academy at West Point, high above the Hudson River sixty miles north of New York City. Army against Carlisle at the field on the Plain. Soldiers on one side, Indians on the other. In imagining the scene, N. Scott Momaday, the Native American novelist and playwright, said that it was like reinventing history. There was, he said, “something in the air that cold November day—something made of omens and prophesies. Some old imbalance was being set right.”
