Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

And I'm Holly Fry.

Today, we have the third part of what I think is our first ever three-parter on the show.

There may have been three-parters by prior hosts that I'm not remembering, but for Holly

and me, it's the first sort of trilogy of podcast.

In part one, we talked about Jim Thorps' early life and his upbringing in boarding schools

for Native American children, including his time on the track and football teams at Carlisle

Indian Industrial School.

And then in part two, we talked about his just incredible performance at the 1912 Summer

Olympic Games in Stockholm, and then how he was later stripped of the medals that he

had earned in those games.

And our concluding episode, we're going to talk about his time as a professional athlete,

and then his life after the end of his career as an athlete, including two pieces of the

story that have just tragically continued for a long time after his death.

One aspect of it I find particularly heartbreaking, which we will get to.

After being stripped of his Olympic medals, Jim Thorps publicly tried to downplay things,

saying he knew that he had earned them.

But really, he was heartbroken at the loss of his medals and the fact that he was now

barred from being an amateur athlete.

He started trying to figure out what he was going to do next.

...