Jim Thorpe’s Olympic Medals Stripped: Cartoons Magazine Centennial 1913
With all the hoopla over Lance Armstrong’s supposed-hyped-to-generate-ad-revenue confessions, forgotten is that this month is the 100th anniversary of the stripping away of Olympic Medals from a real, pre-doping athlete — Jim Thorpe. These medals were legitimately won during the 1912 Olympics, and were taken away in January 1913, in violation of the Olympic Committee’s own rules of that time. In this era, in which the Olympics no longer even requires participants to be amateurs in the sports they are competing in, and on this 100th anniversary, the continued refusal of the Olympics Committee to own up to their original error by reinstating Jim Thorpe’s honestly won medals, is an outrage.
Above, from the March 1913 issue of Cartoons Magazine, is cartoonist Billy Ireland‘s take on the controversy — “No Less a Man”.
Click on the above cartoon, to view it in larger detail.
NativeAmericanHistory W.A. Ireland
— Doug
