All right, answer me this. How can one individual raised on a Native American reservation,

his twin brother and his parents dead by the time he was 16, go on to win Olympic gold medals in

track and field and then play professional football, baseball, and basketball? He wound up in

more than a dozen halls of fame and was repeatedly named the greatest

athlete of the 20th century. I'm Patty Steele. Jim Thorpe's unprecedented talent and achievements,

how he got there and the sad ending to his life. That's next on the backstory.

This is an I-Heart podcast.

The Backstory is back.

All right, first off, I want to thank Backstory listener Drenda Heba for turning me on to this amazing story.

Thank you so much.

I don't even know how you tell a story about a guy like this

because there's so many twists and turns, so many sports in which he excelled. It is absolutely

mind-boggling. Now, not going to lie, I'm the one who got picked, maybe not last, but pretty

far down the line when it came to any, and I mean almost any,

sports activities in school. Yes, I was on the swim team as a diver, but trophies or ribbons.

Yeah, no, not so much. So I'm just always blown away by people who are just great natural athletes.

I love that there are people like that. And when we talk about

the greatest athlete that ever lived, a lot of names pop up. Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, Babe Ruth,

Muhammad Ali, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, to name just a few. But if you look at the accomplishments

of one individual, Jim Thorpe is pretty clearly the

goat.

Like me, you may not know much about him because his heyday was over a hundred years ago.

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