In the film, Batman Vs Superman, two iconic comic book characters are brought face to face, setting up the inevitable debut of the Justice League from the DC universe. In the series, the Avengers, countless super-heroes of the Marvel universe have been brought together much to the delight of geeks and fanboys.
In the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, there was a super-hero team up of sorts when Jim Thorpe and Duke Kahanamoku were selected for the US Olympic Team. Thorpe is considered one of the greatest athletes the world has ever known. At the 1912 Olympics, Thorpe won, amazingly, both the pentathlon and the decathlon.
Jim Thorpe(left) and Duke Kahanamoku (right) in 1912
Duke Kahanamoku of the then American territory of Hawaii helped popularize surfing beyond his Honolulu shores. At the 1912 Olympics, he won the 100-meter finals becoming the fastest swimmer in the world.
Like most super-heroes, Thorpe and Kahanamoku were the outsiders. The Native Indian Thorpe and the Hawaaiin Kahanamoku were relatively dark skinned, and were seen as exotic by mainstream America, as explained by David Davis in his wonderful biography of Kahanamoku called Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku. Davis shared a typical headline from the Detroit Free Press, which accompanied a picture of Kahamoku and a black athlete, Howard Drew: Two Dark-Skinned Athletes with American Team”
The head of the US Olympic squad, John Sullivan, was typical of the times – he believed in the superiority of white athletes, and male athletes. But as Davis explained, he was also
I recently learned that one of the Olympians from the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm, Sweden was General “Old Blood and Guts” George S. Patton – American military hero from World War II. As this wonderful Wired article relates, Patton put in a wonderful effort in the modern Olympics first modern pentathlon. The pentathlon is composed of shooting, swimming, fencing, horse riding and running – the concept being that the officer of that time might have to do all those kinds of things in order to get a message safely to its receiver in a time of war.
In 1912, Patton was a promising junior officer with a reputation for being dedicated, and a hard-driving leader. And despite Patton’s short time to prepare, he finished fifth in the pentathlon, behind four Swedes. Here are a few remarkable anecdotes related to one of the most well-known military leaders of the 20th century.
Patton had a bigger gun:Patton fired 20 bullets with a .38 caliber pistol, while his competitors were using .22 gauge pistols. When judges examined the paper target and saw only 17 holes, Patton claimed that all of his shots hit the target, but because of his higher gauge bullets, larger holes were found in the target. Patton claimed that the missing shots went through existing holes. The judges did not agree, and so he finished 20th, instead of first if he was to be believed.
Patton entering the stadium after his pentathlon run at the 1912 Stockholm Summer Games.
Patton was doped up: The final event of the pentathlon was the 4k race (about 2.5 miles), although it included a run through a thick forest and very muddy pathways. Patton, who had known for only two months that he was heading to Stockholm to represent the US in the pentathlon was not in the condition he would have preferred. But Patton was a ferocious competitor, training hard on the ship – SS Finland – from US to Europe, and then applying a level of energy and aggressiveness that could only be described as all out. In the 300-meter run, he simply swam to exhaustion, but took seventh. In the 4k run, the US trainer decided that Patton could use a little help with a bit of “hop”. That was the nickname for opium, a legal pick-me-up back in the day. Patton ran hard, ended up walking into the Stadium, crossing the finish line in third, and promptly passing out, for several hours.
Patton was an aggressive fencer, but not as aggressive as his wife: Patton approached fencing like he approached warfare – aggressively. In fact, Patton placed fourth in fencing, defeating the French fencer, Jean de Mas Latrie, who had lost only to Patton. As the Wired article quotes a Patton biographer, “Throughout his career, disdain for defense was a Patton trademark. To attack was to succeed, to defend was to invite defeat.” But in this passage from Michael Keane’s book, George S. Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer”, Patton was no match for his wife, who was preparing for the family’s move from France to the US, after Patton’s assignment to the École Militaire in Saumur, France.
George and Beatrice Patton
As the family prepared to return to America, Beatrice was left to pack their belongings while George attended the fencing academy. The day before they departed, Patton casually remarked to his exhausted wife, “I hope you remembered to pack all those swords under the bed.” Walking into the bedroom, Beatrice discovered dozens of swords and scabbards of which she had been completely unaware. Frustrated that her husband had not appreciated her efforts or informed her of the swords he had been collecting, she angrily picked up one of the weapons and began chasing him around the house. A frantic Patton scurried over chairs and tables, pleading with his furious wife, “Don’t! Don’t! Please don’t!” Beatrice eventually brought the sword down on a table, missing her husband, but hard enough to embed the sword in the edge of the table. A newly compliant husband now offered to help his wife pack his collection.
Here is a clip from the movie, Patton, which has nothing to do with the Olympics, but is still fun to watch.
Father of the Modern Olympics, Pierre de Frédy, baron de Coubertin
“The judges have been reading for hours, but it appears as if they are finishing up. Yes, they are now conversing with each other in hushed tones, peering over their notes, sometimes pointing animatedly at particular places on paper. Are they done? They appear to have completed their ruminations and discussion, and I must say, their body language cannot hide the fact that controversy seems to be in the air. Wait, one of the judges is raising the sign. There it is! The winner of the gold medal for Literature in the 1912 Olympic Games….is….George Hohrod and M. Eschbach for ‘Ode to Sport’!”
That’s right, in 1912 at the Stockholm, Sweden Olympics, medals were awarded in the areas of Architecture, Music, Painting, Sculpture and Literature. The father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, had a deep-felt philosophy that sport could have a powerful influence on building character, and believed that the ancient Greeks had the right idea – that developing the intellect and the physical in tandem was a way to build better human beings and better societies.
Walter Winans, An American Trotter, Gold Medal 1912 Olympic Art Competitions in Stockholm in the “Sculpture“ Category.
At first sight we might think that sport and art are separated by a distinction as grave as that between mind and body, but while the ancient Greeks, at the head of what became the western tradition, did often fetishise that distinction, they also liked to collapse it. At some level, they considered that orderly bodily motion in sport was linked to orderly song and dance, and that both were excellent ways of celebrating the human and thereby honouring the divine too. Both sports and arts could be part of festivals and celebrations, which were also religious events. Poetry, or more precisely song, because most Greek poetry was initially delivered to a musical accompaniment, was connected to sport in other ways too; poetry rewarded athletic achievement, victorious athletes supported poetry, and both types of activity were subject to ferocious competition.
Goff went on to reveal that the winners of the gold medal for literature was actually one person, that Hohrod and Eschbach were the names of villages near the birthplace of the wife of de Coubertin. In fact, it was de Coubertin himself who was the Olympic champion in literature. Goff was unable to learn whether the judges knew it was the founder of the Olympic Games who penned the poem, “Ode to Sport”.
Despite de Coubertin’s passion for making the Olympic Games a way to display all attributes of the so-called Chivalrous Athlete, the art competitions that started in 1912 would fade away in 1948. Goff again explains: “The artistic competitions at the revived Olympics never excited much real interest, and the International Olympic Committee dropped them after London 1948. Given that the arts competitions, unlike the sporting ones, were not very susceptible to cheating, drugs scandals, or, later on, television, they were never going to be as thrilling as the sports which did offer all these attractions. Instead, arts festivals started to accompany the Olympic Games, and by 1968 the cultural events were part of the Olympic Charter which Olympic host cities had to sign.”
For those who made it this far, here is a link to winners of the artistic Olympic competitions, as well as a link to the poem that won the only Olympic medal for literature – Ode to Sport.
Carlo Pellegrini (ITA), Winter Sports, Gold Medal Winner in the “Painting” Category of the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Art Competitions.
In a time of social media hyperbole, where lists tell us who or what is number 1, it may be hard to compare any athlete with James Francis “Jim” Thorpe, or as he was known by his Native American friends, Wa-Tho-Huk.
Jim Thorpe won gold in both the decathlon and the pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, which means he could run, jump and throw better than almost anyone else in the world.
And that’s not all.
He played baseball for the New York Giants, Cincinnati Reds, and the Boston Braves. He played basketball for the “World Famous Indians”, a travelling basketball team. And he played football for the Canton Bulldogs, which won championships in the American Professional Football Association, a precursor to the NFL.
Thorpe suffered from alcoholism, struggled in poverty after the Great Depression, and passed away broke in California. And that’s when his life really got interesting.
Thorpe was brought back to his birth place in Shawnee, Oklahoma, lying in state. Somehow, Thorpe’s third wife, Patricia, stole the body and shipped it to Pennsylvania. Neither Thorpe or his wife had any connection to Pennsylvania. But the towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk smelled a business opportunity. They bought
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