The Olympics: Records

Clearly the outdoors taught him the famous looseness of movement so often mistaken for lassitude. The discovery of Thorpe at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the government-run boarding institution for Native Americans he attended from to , between bouts of truancy, is a well-worn story.

In he was ambling across the campus when he saw some upperclassmen practicing the high jump. He was 5-foot-8, and the bar was set at Thorpe asked if he could try—and jumped it in overalls and a hickory work shirt. Carlisle, a hybrid trade school and academy, was devoted to the forcible cultural assimilation of American Indian children.

Those who knew Thorpe as a schoolboy received the purest impression of him; before he was a champion at his peak, or a guarded celebrity, he was just a head ducker with an uncertain mouth who would have been happy to hunt and handle horses for the rest of his life. He hated the shut-in strictures of school, and he bolted every formal institution he attended. He would trust anybody. With students from 6 to college age, at its height Carlisle had an enrollment of no more than 1, pupils, yet on the collegiate playing fields it was the equal of the Ivy League powers, one of the more remarkable stories in American sports.

This was partly thanks to Thorpe, who won renown in football, baseball, track and lacrosse, and also competed in hockey, handball, tennis, boxing and ballroom dancing. At track meets, Warner signed him up for six and seven events. Once, Thorpe single-handedly won a dual meet against Lafayette, taking first in the high hurdles, low hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put and discus throw.

The result of all this varied activity was that he became highly practiced in two methods modern athletes now recognize as building blocks of performance: Thorpe studied other athletes as closely as he had once studied horses, borrowing their techniques. Until , Thorpe had never thrown a javelin or pole-vaulted. Nevertheless, he managed second place. By the time Thorpe embarked for Stockholm aboard the ocean liner Finland with the rest of the U. Olympic contingent—among whom numbered a West Pointer named George Patton and a Hawaiian swimmer named Duke Kahanamoku—he was in the peak shape of his life and spent a good deal of his time tapering and visualizing.

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This led to the legend that he was merely a skylarker. I think that will win it. The numbers Thorpe posted in Stockholm give us a concrete answer: Thorpe began the Olympics by crushing the field in the now-defunct pentathlon, which consisted of five events in a single day.

He placed first in four of them, dusting his competition in the 1,meter run by almost five seconds. A week later the three-day decathlon competition began in a pouring rain. Thorpe opened the event by splashing down the track in the meter dash in Warner hastily put together a mismatched pair in time for the high jump, which Thorpe won.

Bob Beamon’s 29 feet and 2 1/2-inch long jump

Later that afternoon came one of his favorite events, the meter hurdles. Thorpe blistered the track in On the final day of competition, Thorpe placed third and fourth in the events in which he was most inexperienced, the pole vault and javelin. Then came the very last event, the 1,meter run.

Archived from the original on 29 September Retrieved 23 August Retrieved 25 August Retrieved 29 August Retrieved 18 August Retrieved 11 August Archived from the original on 24 August Official website of the Summer Olympics. Archived from the original on 4 December Retrieved 4 August Retrieved 19 August Archived from the original on 1 September New York Daily News.

Retrieved 20 August Ethiopia's Ayana smashes world record for 10,m gold". Retrieved 12 August Retrieved 7 August Retrieved 10 August Isinbayeva raises the bar and the Bird's Nest roof". Hitchon wins historic GB hammer bronze". The women's event was added to the programme at the Olympics just over fifty years later. The Olympic record for the women's event was set by the East German athlete Ilona Slupianek with a put of Two variations on the event have been contested at the Olympics: The Intercalated Games were held in Athens and at the time were officially recognised as part of the Olympic Games series, with the intention being to hold a games in Greece in two-year intervals between the internationally held Olympics.

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However, this plan never came to fruition and the International Olympic Committee IOC later decided not to recognise these games as part of the official Olympic series. Some sports historians continue to treat the results of these games as part of the Olympic canon.

At this event a men's shot put was held and Martin Sheridan of the United States won the competition. A stone throw event, similar to the shot put, was also contested for the first and only time at an Olympic event. Athletes were allowed to throw rather than put the implement, which weighed 14 pounds 6. Nikolaos Georgantas won the event for the host nation, while Sheridan filling in for his absent team mate, Jim Mitchel placed second.