This is a piece from Jeff Benjamin on Jim Thorpe and his AAU Hall of Fame Induction video. Jeff Benjamin has encouraged the movement to give Jim Thorpe the recognition that he deserved. Jeff has been talking about this AAU Hall of Fame ceremony ever since it happened.

by Jeff Benjamin
www.runblogrun.com

“The real criteria for making it to our Hall is that, at one time, you held an AAU card from the Middle Atlantic. Jim Thorpe would have gone in earlier, but we had to track down his AAU info. When he was in the Carlisle School, he ran in the AAU meets…so he had a Middle Atlantic AAU card.”

– Mid-Atlantic AAU District Director Alison Eachus

In June of 2023, another statement to the greatness, as well as the over 100 years of injustices, towards Jim Thorpe was rectified, and it may very well be the last one that finally “closes the book.”

In 1983, the International Olympic Committee restored Thorpe’s 1912 Olympic Pentathlon & Decathlon Gold medals to his family (Thorpe died in 1952).

In 2021, the IOC finally reinstated Thorpe as the SOLE champion in both Olympic events in the official record books. FINISH ARTICLE >