Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. This is
Speaker 1: the second part of our three parter on Jim Thorpe,
Speaker 1: one more part than we often have in our multi
Speaker 1: part episodes. Last time, we talked about his childhood and
Speaker 1: how he joined the track and field and then the
Speaker 1: football team at Carlisle Indian Industrial School. When we left
Speaker 1: off in our last episode, he had just finished the
Speaker 1: nine nine football season, and that is where we're going
Speaker 1: to pick things up again. One of the reasons that
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe had decided to go to Carlisle Indian Industrial
Speaker 1: School in nineteen o four was that things had been
Speaker 1: difficult for him in Oklahoma after the deaths of so
Speaker 1: many family members. But by the end of the nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight nineteen o nine school year, he was starting
Speaker 1: to feel really homesick. He asked for leave to visit
Speaker 1: his family, something that the administration seems to have thought
Speaker 1: was just for a summer break, but it was not.
Speaker 1: Although Thorpe clearly excelled at football and track and field
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century, unless a person was working
Speaker 1: as a coach, the only sport that might actually allow
Speaker 1: them to earn a really reliable living was baseball. That
Speaker 1: was thanks to the existence of multiple year major league contracts.
Speaker 1: So like you could make enough to support yourself in
Speaker 1: other sports, maybe, but like not with any kind of
Speaker 1: reliability or long term stability. In the summers of nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine and nineteen ten, Thorpe played semi pro baseball
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, spending the rest of those years back
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma, living with various family members, working on farms
Speaker 1: and ranches and hunting. These baseball teams paid Thorpe about
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars a week, which was described as meal money,
Speaker 1: and he was not the only Carlysle student playing semi
Speaker 1: professional baseball at the time. His Carlyle classmates Joe Libby
Speaker 1: and Jesse young Deer did this as well, all three
Speaker 1: of them having been encouraged to do so by Pop Warner.
Speaker 1: Thorpe's long term goal seems to have been to break
Speaker 1: into the major leagues from this semi professional play. He
Speaker 1: had decided that the only job that really suited his
Speaker 1: temperament and his interests was to just be an athlete,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen eleven, he ran into his former track mentor,
Speaker 1: Albert Exen Dine, who was now a coach at Carlisle.
Speaker 1: Ex and Dine encouraged him to come back to the school.
Speaker 1: During his years away, Thorpe had gotten a little taller
Speaker 1: and had also filled out some more. X and I
Speaker 1: described him as being big as a mule, so ex
Speaker 1: and Dine thought that Thorpe would make a really good
Speaker 1: addition to the football team at Carlisle, and then Pop
Speaker 1: Warner also promised Thorpe not only a chance to play
Speaker 1: for Carlysle again, but also a shot at the nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve Alympic team. Although athletics were what drew Thorpe back
Speaker 1: to Carlisle, he did keep up with his class work
Speaker 1: as well, and he was overall a good student. One
Speaker 1: of his teachers was Maryanne Moore, not yet a famous poet.
Speaker 1: He was apparently one of her favorite students, but she
Speaker 1: did not teach him poetry. She was teaching a class
Speaker 1: in commercial law, intended to help indigenous students protect themselves
Speaker 1: in legal and land dealings after they finished school. In
Speaker 1: his earlier time on the Carlisle football team, Thorpe had
Speaker 1: become one of the most skilled and recognizable players. They
Speaker 1: were write ups about him in local papers, and there
Speaker 1: were always fans who were eager to buy him drinks.
Speaker 1: That continued in the nineteen eleven season. That year, Walter Camp,
Speaker 1: who was known as the father of American football, named
Speaker 1: Thorpe a first team All American and that is an
Speaker 1: honor that he would earn for the second time in
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve. Thorpe's return to the school was not without problems,
Speaker 1: though we talked in Part one about how conditions at
Speaker 1: Carlisle and other boarding schools for indigenous students were often
Speaker 1: insufficient at best. As an athlete, Thorpe was shielded from
Speaker 1: a lot of this, and later on he often talked
Speaker 1: fondly of the school. But he did contract a bacterial
Speaker 1: eye infection called tracoma after the nineteen eleven football season
Speaker 1: was over. Tracoma outbreaks were a frequent problem at Carlisle
Speaker 1: and at other residential schools. This infection can cause the
Speaker 1: eyelid to turn inward, which causes the eyelashes to scrape
Speaker 1: the surface of the eye. It is incredibly painful. This
Speaker 1: happened to Thorpe and he had to have surgery to
Speaker 1: correct it. This may have affected his vision, but it's
Speaker 1: not something that he ever mentioned again after leaving Carlisle.
Speaker 1: Although Thorpe loved to play football, a much bigger focus
Speaker 1: for him going into the spring of nineteen twelve was
Speaker 1: track and field. In preparation for the Olympics, the International
Speaker 1: Olympic Committee had added to all around event to the
Speaker 1: Summer Games, the Classic pentathlon and the decathlon. These were
Speaker 1: the events that Thorpe started training for with an eye
Speaker 1: toward tryouts in New York on May eighteenth. Also representing
Speaker 1: Carlisle was Hopie runner Lewis Tauanama, who was preparing for
Speaker 1: the ten thousand meter race and the marathon. This was
Speaker 1: relatively early in the history of the Olympic Games. We've
Speaker 1: walked through that history in a lot more detail in
Speaker 1: our episode on Pierre de Cooperton, who was the father
Speaker 1: of the modern Olympics. The first modern Olympic Games had
Speaker 1: been held in eighteen ninety six, and the nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: games were only the fifth Olympic Games in the modern era.
Speaker 1: It had only been a few years since the United
Speaker 1: States had seriously started trying to select and train Olympic contenders,
Speaker 1: with the American Olympic Committee being established in nineteen oh six,
Speaker 1: but at the same time this was still the Olympics,
Speaker 1: meant to showcase the best amateur athletes from nations around
Speaker 1: the world, and Thorpe was trying to qualify for them,
Speaker 1: not only without an Olympic level track and field coach,
Speaker 1: but also without having ever done some of the events
Speaker 1: involved in the pentathlon and the decathlon at all. For example,
Speaker 1: he got to the Olympic tryouts without knowing that you
Speaker 1: take a running start when throwing a javelin. At tryouts,
Speaker 1: Thorpe sort of hopped mostly in place and still managed
Speaker 1: to throw the javelin a hundred and thirty six ft
Speaker 1: and seven point five inches. Yeah, he uh qualified for
Speaker 1: that knowing not what he was doing at all. I
Speaker 1: feel bad because I'm sure there were athletes there who
Speaker 1: had been training and training and training, and he just
Speaker 1: kind of dusted them. And like, how for us, we
Speaker 1: have all been in that moment where you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: prepared of doing it. This person doesn't know what they're
Speaker 1: doing and they're ten times better. Yeah. So, because they
Speaker 1: were indigenous, Thorpe and Tawanama were considered wards of the
Speaker 1: Federal government and not US citizens, but even so, they
Speaker 1: were selected to represent the United States at the nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. They set sail aboard
Speaker 1: the s S Fenland on June fourteenth, nineteen twelve. News
Speaker 1: reports from the time and early biographies of Jim Thorpe
Speaker 1: claim that he refused to train on the ship, but
Speaker 1: this was untrue. Multiple teammates have confirmed that he was
Speaker 1: training with everyone else, and there are also photos that
Speaker 1: show him running laps on the deck. This news coverage
Speaker 1: was connected to racist stereotypes of indigenous people as lazy,
Speaker 1: and it's simultaneously worked to undercut Thorpe's achievements as an
Speaker 1: athlete by suggesting that they came from some kind of
Speaker 1: innate ability as a Native American and not from his
Speaker 1: having worked at it. It is true that he didn't
Speaker 1: train a lot on the last leg of the voyage,
Speaker 1: but at that point he was tapering or cutting back
Speaker 1: on his physical activity as part of the preparation for
Speaker 1: the endurance events that he was about to undertake. That
Speaker 1: is something people do still today. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 1: real thing that the other entrance athletes were also doing.
Speaker 1: We will get to what happened during these actual Olympic
Speaker 1: events after a quick sponsor break. The pentathlon at the
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve Summer Olympic Games took place on July seventh,
Speaker 1: which was the second day of the Games. Thorpe placed
Speaker 1: first in four of the five events. That was the
Speaker 1: running broad jump, he had a distance of twenty three
Speaker 1: ft two and seven tenth inches, the two hundred meter dash,
Speaker 1: which he had a time of twenty two and nine
Speaker 1: tenths seconds, a discus throw he threw it more than
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixteen feet, which was three feet farther
Speaker 1: than the next competitor, and a fifteen hundred meter run.
Speaker 1: He did that in four minutes, forty four and eight
Speaker 1: tenths seconds. The only events of the five that he
Speaker 1: did not win was the javelin throw. He had improved
Speaker 1: a lot since qualifying in tryouts and not knowing at
Speaker 1: all what he was doing. He's still placed third. Classic
Speaker 1: pentathlon is scored with one point for first place finish,
Speaker 1: two points for second place, three points for third, and
Speaker 1: so on, so a lower score is better. With his
Speaker 1: four first place finishes and one third, thorpe score was seven.
Speaker 1: The second place winner had a score of twenty one.
Speaker 1: I would call that blowing the competition out of the water.
Speaker 1: They got dusted. Because I don't follow any sport, I
Speaker 1: did not know how classic pentathlon was scored, and I
Speaker 1: was looking at the rankings on the Official Olympic Games
Speaker 1: website and I was like, how does he have a
Speaker 1: score of seven and the next competitors I'll have scores
Speaker 1: have like twenty one three, like an entire more digits.
Speaker 1: Were these all the same games? What's happening? So the
Speaker 1: Decathlon started on July thirteenth, and in the interim to
Speaker 1: keep himself active but without overtaxing himself, Thorpe participated in
Speaker 1: a few smaller events. He didn't earn medals in any
Speaker 1: of these, but also he was really conserving his energy.
Speaker 1: On the first day of the decathlon, it was raining.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned in Part one, Carlyle's athletic team had
Speaker 1: a reputation for not being at their best in bad weather,
Speaker 1: and this was true for Thorpe as well. The events
Speaker 1: that took place on that first day were the one
Speaker 1: meter dash, the running broad jump, and the shot put.
Speaker 1: This was tougher than the pentathlon. On the broad jump
Speaker 1: that was the first event and Thorpe faulted on his
Speaker 1: first two tries, so it took him three tries to
Speaker 1: even do it. The only event he won that day
Speaker 1: was the shot put, which he threw forty two ft
Speaker 1: five and which was more than two ft ahead of
Speaker 1: the next competitor. It was very good it, throwing things
Speaker 1: many feet farther than the next competitor. He joked that
Speaker 1: the only reason he did as well as he did
Speaker 1: at the shop put was because he got to change
Speaker 1: into some dry clothes first. On the second day of
Speaker 1: the decathlon, the weather was great, but Thorpe's shoes were missing.
Speaker 1: Thorpe and Warner had to scrounge up another pair, finally
Speaker 1: finding one shoe that was too small and another that
Speaker 1: was too large. This sounds very comical, but also was
Speaker 1: surely stressful. The events for the day were the running,
Speaker 1: high jump, the four hundred run, the one hurdles. He
Speaker 1: came in first in the high jump, second in the
Speaker 1: four d and first in the hurdles, setting a record
Speaker 1: of fifteen point six seconds. Yeah, we do not know
Speaker 1: what happened to his shoes. The common conclusion from a
Speaker 1: lot of people is that somebody stole his shoes to
Speaker 1: try to keep him from being an efficient competitor in
Speaker 1: these games, like we really, we really don't know. Day
Speaker 1: three included the discus, the pole vault, the javelin and run.
Speaker 1: He placed third in the pole vault and fourth in
Speaker 1: the javelin and run. He came in first, and he
Speaker 1: even beat his time from the mentathlon earlier in the games.
Speaker 1: This time he ran up in four minutes forty point
Speaker 1: one seconds. This is incredible to me because number one,
Speaker 1: he would have been more tired at this point than
Speaker 1: he was earlier. Number two, he was still in his
Speaker 1: mismatched shoes. Reading this makes me feel like I have
Speaker 1: not been running in a while, but like I was
Speaker 1: the prissiest, least coping runner on the planet. Because it's
Speaker 1: like my sock feels two millimeters off of where it
Speaker 1: should sit. I can't possibly and yet this dude choose
Speaker 1: that don't fit trucking along. Uh. In the end, Thorpe
Speaker 1: had placed in the top four of all ten decathalon
Speaker 1: events and had placed first in four of those events.
Speaker 1: This scores differently, so the scores here Bigger is better.
Speaker 1: Just keep that in mind versus what we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: So out of a possible total score of ten thousand points.
Speaker 1: Thorpe scored eight thousand, four hundred twelve. The second place finisher,
Speaker 1: Hugo Wiselander of Sweden, earned seven thousand, seven hundred twenty four.
Speaker 1: Thorpe's score stood as a record until nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: and because the Classic Pentathlon was retired from the Games
Speaker 1: in ur, Thorpe is the only person to have won
Speaker 1: both the Classic Pentathlon and the decathlon at the Olympic Games.
Speaker 1: I just want to take in a moment to just
Speaker 1: point out that there were six hundred and eighty eight
Speaker 1: points separating Thorpe and the next competitor in these scores.
Speaker 1: So one of the more memorable stories about Jim Thorpe
Speaker 1: in these Olympic Games, aside from his incredible performance and
Speaker 1: both of those two events, that centers on his appearance
Speaker 1: at the awards ceremony. After having awarded Thorpe gold medals
Speaker 1: for both the decathlon and the pentathlon, King Gustave, the
Speaker 1: fifth of Sweden's told him quote, sir, you are the
Speaker 1: greatest athlete in the world. It is widely reported that
Speaker 1: Thorpe replied to him, thanks, King, I say widely, like
Speaker 1: almost every article about this mentions it uh The drunk
Speaker 1: history about this mentions it, but biographer Kate Buford contends
Speaker 1: that it probably never actually happened and was just another
Speaker 1: way to kind of undermine Thorpe's accomplishments and his personality.
Speaker 1: Writing quote a flippant reply would have been out of
Speaker 1: character for a man who was highly uncomfortable in public
Speaker 1: ceremonies and hated to stand out. In addition to his medals,
Speaker 1: Thorpe was awarded a life size bust of the King
Speaker 1: of Sweden, as well as a bejeweled chalice shaped like
Speaker 1: a Viking ship, which was from zarn Nicholas the second
Speaker 1: of Russia. Before returning to the US, Thorpe and his
Speaker 1: tea mates took part in exhibition games and Europe. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned in part one, Thorpe had some French ancestry,
Speaker 1: and he spent some time in France to get a
Speaker 1: little sense of that ancestry. Once the team had arrived
Speaker 1: back in the United States, they were really treated as heroes.
Speaker 1: There were banquets and receptions and ticker tape parades and
Speaker 1: multiple major cities. Thorpe also got a letter of congratulations
Speaker 1: from President William Howard Taft he found a lot of
Speaker 1: this attention really overwhelming, though he did not always enjoy
Speaker 1: being in a spotlight. Thorpe's incredible performance at the nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve Olympic Games sparked a renewed interest in the Games
Speaker 1: as people waited for the next Jim Thorpe to arrive
Speaker 1: on the scene, and his success continued after he got
Speaker 1: back home. At the Amateur Athletics Union All Around Championship
Speaker 1: in New York in nineteen twelve, Thorpe set a new
Speaker 1: record of seven thousand, four hundred seventy six points, in
Speaker 1: spite of the fact that the weather was terrible and
Speaker 1: he was actually recovering from food point pasoning. Thorpe returned
Speaker 1: to Carlisle after the Olympic Games, and by this point
Speaker 1: he had also enrolled some of his siblings at the
Speaker 1: school since both of their parents had died. He really
Speaker 1: seems to have been trying to keep as many of
Speaker 1: them together as much as he could. The Carlisle football
Speaker 1: team also had a strong season in nineteen twelve, with
Speaker 1: Thorpe scoring a hundred and ninety eight of the team's
Speaker 1: five hundred and four total points and twenty five of
Speaker 1: its sixty six touchdowns. Carlisle finished the nineteen twelve season
Speaker 1: with twelve wins, one loss, in one tie. One of
Speaker 1: Carlyle's most memorable games in the nineteen twelve season was
Speaker 1: against the US Military Academy at West Point. This game
Speaker 1: was hugely symbolic, as Pop Warner told them, quote, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to prepare you for this game. Just go
Speaker 1: read your history books. Your father's and grandfathers fought their fathers.
Speaker 1: One of West Points players that this game was Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: who would later be the President of the United States.
Speaker 1: Eisenhower and another player, Leland Hobbs, teamed up to try
Speaker 1: to tackle Thorpe hard enough that it would put him
Speaker 1: out of the game. Thorpe saw what was coming and
Speaker 1: stepped out of the way, which caused Eisenhower and Hobbs
Speaker 1: to collide. It is widely reported that Eisenhower was seriously
Speaker 1: injured enough when he did this that it ended his
Speaker 1: football career, but his injury happened at a different game
Speaker 1: later in the season and not at the one against Carlisle.
Speaker 1: In my head, that plays out as a tech savery
Speaker 1: cartoon like the Smooth Bugs bunny side step while your
Speaker 1: enemies clunk into each other. Yeah. Uh. In the end,
Speaker 1: Carlyle won the game against West Point twenty seven to six.
Speaker 1: The New York Times right up of this game is
Speaker 1: illustrative not just of the game and Thorpe's place in it,
Speaker 1: but also of how newspapers in general wrote about the
Speaker 1: Carlysle team. Quote. Jim Thorpe and his redoubtable band of
Speaker 1: Carlyle Indian gridiron stars invaded the planes this afternoon to
Speaker 1: match their prowess against the mole skin gladiators of Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam's military Academy. And when the two crossed in the
Speaker 1: semi darkness of late afternoon, the Cadets had been shown
Speaker 1: up as no other West Point team has been in
Speaker 1: many years. They were buried under the overwhelming score of
Speaker 1: twenty seven to six. This article went on to describe
Speaker 1: Thorpe quote, he simply ran wild while the Cadets tried
Speaker 1: in vain to stop his progress. It was like trying
Speaker 1: to clutch a shadow. In addition to football and track
Speaker 1: and field, Thorpe also competed in the Thing that Wins
Speaker 1: My Heart in his story, ballroom dancing, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve he won the Intercollegiate ballroom Dancing Championship. But in
Speaker 1: January of nineteen thirteen, everything fell apart, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get to that. After a sponsor break. In January
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirteen, the Wooster Telegram ran an interview with
Speaker 1: coach Charles Clancy reporter Roy Ruggles. Johnson had been interviewing
Speaker 1: Clancy and had noticed a picture of Jim Thorpe on
Speaker 1: the wall, and the conversation that followed, Johnson learned that
Speaker 1: Thorpe had been paid to play baseball. The published story
Speaker 1: claimed that Thorpe had been paid to play baseball for
Speaker 1: a team in Winston Salem, North Carolina. That was not true,
Speaker 1: but as we talked about in Part one, Thorpe had
Speaker 1: been paid about fifteen dollars a week to play baseball
Speaker 1: and rock him out in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the
Speaker 1: summers of nineteen o nine and nineteen ten. By the
Speaker 1: strictest reading of the rules, the Olympic Games were for
Speaker 1: amateur athletes. Thorpe had been paid to play baseball, which
Speaker 1: meant the most technical sense, he was a professional. At
Speaker 1: the same time, these rules had a lot of gray area,
Speaker 1: like college athletes who received free tuition or room and
Speaker 1: board were still consider amateur, and that actually had a
Speaker 1: whole lot more monetary value than Thorpe's fifteen dollars a
Speaker 1: week playing baseball. Only baseball, boxing, and horse racing were
Speaker 1: formally recognized as professional sports at the time. Semi professional ball,
Speaker 1: where players were paid quote meal money, was also kind
Speaker 1: of a gray area. He basically was making a subsistence
Speaker 1: to keep playing at that point. Also, while it does
Speaker 1: seem as though Thorpe was hoping to translate that time
Speaker 1: in semi pro baseball into a shot at the major leagues,
Speaker 1: it does not seem to have occurred to him at
Speaker 1: all that being paid to play baseball in nineteen o
Speaker 1: nine and would have qualified him as a professional athlete
Speaker 1: in track and field. Two or three years later, on
Speaker 1: Pop Warner's advice, Thorpe wrote a letter to Mr James E. Sullivan,
Speaker 1: the American Commissioner to the Olympic Games and secretary of
Speaker 1: the Amateur Athletics Union, and this letter Thorpe wrote, quote
Speaker 1: I was not very wise to the ways of the
Speaker 1: world and did not re aalized that this was wrong
Speaker 1: and it would make me a professional in the track sports.
Speaker 1: Although I learned from the other players that it would
Speaker 1: be better for me not to let anyone know that
Speaker 1: I was playing, and for that reason I never told
Speaker 1: anyone at the school about it until today. I never
Speaker 1: realized until now what a big mistake I made by
Speaker 1: keeping it a secret about my ball playing, and I
Speaker 1: am sorry I did so. I hope I will be
Speaker 1: partly excused by the fact that I was simply an
Speaker 1: Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things.
Speaker 1: In fact, I did not know that I was doing
Speaker 1: wrong because I was doing what I knew several other
Speaker 1: college men had done, except that they had not used
Speaker 1: their own names. In the same letter, he wrote that
Speaker 1: he hadn't been doing it for the money, but because
Speaker 1: he liked to play ball, and he noted that he
Speaker 1: had turned down many lucrative offers after the Olympic Games
Speaker 1: were over because he wanted to remain an amateur. In
Speaker 1: terms of this language about being simply an Indian schoolboy
Speaker 1: from this letter, Thorpe was about when he wrote it,
Speaker 1: and he was in his very early twenties during those
Speaker 1: baseball seasons, so it doesn't really seem like a schoolboy
Speaker 1: as one would think of it. At the same time,
Speaker 1: though Federal Indian policy was largely treating Indigenous people as
Speaker 1: wards of the government and not as full citizens capable
Speaker 1: of handling their own affairs, And even in his twenties,
Speaker 1: Thorpe was being treated as a dependent by everyone from
Speaker 1: Carlisle to the federal government. He was simply not being
Speaker 1: treated as an adult, fully capable human person. This letter
Speaker 1: was Thorpe's only opportunity to defend himself, and it did
Speaker 1: not sway the Amateur Athletics Union. The a A used
Speaker 1: response acknowledged that it had no direct authority over the
Speaker 1: sport of baseball, before going on to say quote, the
Speaker 1: American Olympic Committee and the Amateur Athletic Union feel that
Speaker 1: while Thorpe is deserving of the severest condemnation for concealing
Speaker 1: the fact that he had professionalized himself by receiving money
Speaker 1: for playing baseball, they also feel that those who knew
Speaker 1: of his professional acts are deserving of still greater censure
Speaker 1: for their silence. The a AU apologize to the International
Speaker 1: Olympics Committee and to the nations of the world for
Speaker 1: entering Thorpe into the Olympics, before continuing quote, the Amateur
Speaker 1: Athletics Union regrets that it permitted Thorpe to compete in
Speaker 1: amateur contests during the past several years, and we'll do
Speaker 1: everything in its power to secure the return of prizes
Speaker 1: and readjustment of points won by him, and will immediately
Speaker 1: eliminate his records from the books. The a AU retroactively
Speaker 1: reclassified Jim Thorpe as a professional athlete. He had to
Speaker 1: return his medals and the other trophies and awards that
Speaker 1: he had been granted at the nineteen twelve Olympic Games.
Speaker 1: The rankings for the events he had won were then adjusted,
Speaker 1: with the previous silver medalists now in first place, the
Speaker 1: bronze medalists in second, in the fourth place finishers in third.
Speaker 1: Although the newly designated first place winners did suggest that
Speaker 1: they would not object to being returned to their former
Speaker 1: ranking if this decision were overturned, they did not, as
Speaker 1: has been widely reported, refused to accept on the grounds
Speaker 1: of fairness. Although there were some supporters of the A
Speaker 1: a U and I s U S decisions here, in general,
Speaker 1: this was a wildly unpopular decision. Editorial cartoons lampooned the
Speaker 1: io C. One, for example, illustrated Thorpe as a sacrificial goat,
Speaker 1: being held down by a knife wielding Amateur Athletics Union
Speaker 1: with a herd of other goats labeled summer ball players
Speaker 1: off in the distance. This also led to a larger
Speaker 1: discussion about what professionalism meant, with people noting the disparity
Speaker 1: between athletes like Thorpe and college athletes on scholarships. There
Speaker 1: was also a lot of discussion about things like purity
Speaker 1: within the world of sports and it people should be
Speaker 1: playing only for the sake of the sport itself and
Speaker 1: not for money, and that led people to point out
Speaker 1: that those kinds of definitions meant that the only people
Speaker 1: who could pursue athletics or play in the Olympic Games
Speaker 1: were the ones who were rich enough to do it
Speaker 1: without getting paid for their work. Those that sided with
Speaker 1: the a a U and IOC argued that American athleticism
Speaker 1: in general was becoming too commercialized and professionalized. So this
Speaker 1: decision has come to be viewed as a huge miscarriage
Speaker 1: of justice, one that was influenced by racism and which
Speaker 1: did not give Thorpe a real chance to defend himself,
Speaker 1: and afterward his life changed dramatically. So this is to
Speaker 1: me a real bummer of a place to take a break,
Speaker 1: but we are going to talk about his life after
Speaker 1: he could no longer be an amateur athlete in part three?
Speaker 1: Do you have listener mail? Hopefully slightly more peppy. I
Speaker 1: do have listener mail. Um. I would say it's peppier
Speaker 1: because it's it's related to our Unearthed episodes, which tends
Speaker 1: to be favorites. Uh. This is from Nan, and Nan
Speaker 1: writes about the thing that we talked about in the
Speaker 1: Unearthed episode about how the Norman Conquest affected people's diets, um,
Speaker 1: which I didn't. We talked about it in the behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, not in the Unearthed episode itself, because the
Speaker 1: coverage of that report included some articles saying this change
Speaker 1: diets dramatically and others that said this changed diets hardly
Speaker 1: at all. Nan so helpfully did something I just did
Speaker 1: not have the time and capacity to do, which is
Speaker 1: to analyze the original paper. So Nan says, Hi, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy, at some point in the Autumn Unearthed you
Speaker 1: mentioned a study of diet across the Norman Conquest that
Speaker 1: you didn't report on because you couldn't find popular articles
Speaker 1: that gave you a clear story. Curiosity peaked. I looked
Speaker 1: it up. Here's the skinny data from Oxford. Analysis of
Speaker 1: lipids fat residue on pottery shows that before and after
Speaker 1: folks were mostly eating cows deeping goats, however, rarely dairy
Speaker 1: before but not after, rarely chicken and pork after but
Speaker 1: not before. Speculation is that dairy might have shifted form
Speaker 1: cheese or been stored and specialized vessels after conquest. Cabbage,
Speaker 1: onions and friends, rassica, and alliums were important both before
Speaker 1: and after the conquest. Toilet remains, pollen and charred stuff
Speaker 1: indicate a wide variety of plant foods, including a variety
Speaker 1: of cereal grains, broad beans, celery apple, black gray plums,
Speaker 1: and summer savory. This didn't change with the conquest. Analysis
Speaker 1: of heat exposure of pots and patterns of soot on
Speaker 1: cooking surfaces suggests that post conquest pot cooking was slower,
Speaker 1: that lower temperatures, pot placed above the fire rather than
Speaker 1: in it, and roasting became a thing. Preconquest pigs were
Speaker 1: mainly herbivores and apparently sourced from different places and raised
Speaker 1: using different practices. Post conquest piggies were omnivorous and had
Speaker 1: more consistent diet. It's perhaps due to more consistent common
Speaker 1: practice in their husbandry. Not much changed for cows across
Speaker 1: the conquest. They were raised on all different kinds of
Speaker 1: pasture before and after. Pre conquest, sheep and goats likely
Speaker 1: came from all over to Oxford, with perhaps more local
Speaker 1: sourcing afterwards, but there are other interpretations of the isotope data,
Speaker 1: including more leaves in their diet. Based on herd demographics
Speaker 1: pre conquest, sheep were raised first for wool, but afterwards
Speaker 1: somewhere raised specifically for the meat market more single cohort demography.
Speaker 1: Analysis of human diet from carbon and nitrogen isotopes show
Speaker 1: much less varied diet post conquest, which the author's interpret
Speaker 1: is greater control of the market economy by Norman authorities
Speaker 1: and intensification of agriculture fertilizing with manure. Nitrogen values hint
Speaker 1: at more meat consumption or just more pork consumption post conquest.
Speaker 1: A number of individuals showed evidence of food and security
Speaker 1: during growth, but that couldn't be linked directly to the
Speaker 1: conquest or distinguished from thamine before or after the conquest.
Speaker 1: Human dental disease and other diet related pathologies didn't change
Speaker 1: much across the intervals, so you can see why different
Speaker 1: someone's might report that the conquest changed things and didn't
Speaker 1: love the show. Cheers, Nan, Thank you so much, Nan.
Speaker 1: I do love to read original papers when I'm working
Speaker 1: on these unearthed episodes. But um that it it. There
Speaker 1: was just a lot, yes uh so, thank you so
Speaker 1: so so much for putting together just such a lovely
Speaker 1: and concise synopsis of what the paper was talking about
Speaker 1: so we can share with everyone. Um, if you would
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