The greatest Olympic athlete from every U.S. state

Oklahoma: Jim Thorpe

Sport: Track and Field

Olympics: Stockholm 1912

One of the easiest calls on the entire list, Jim Thorpe is one of the best athletes to ever compete across the sports landscape. Thorpe played baseball, basketball, and football in addition to being an accomplished track and field athlete. He attended Carlisle and while there he led his school to an upset of Harvard and a record of 11-1 in football. He could truly do it all no matter what sport he chose.

When he went to the 1912 Olympic Games, he competed in the pentathlon and the decathlon. He dominated both events and in the pentathlon, he won four of the five events with javelin being the one event he didn’t win. When it came time for the decathlon, Thorpe set a world record that would stand for 36 years with a total of 8,412 points. He bested his nearest competitor by almost 700 points. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the USA.

When he returned to the United States, Thorpe made appearances playing baseball. Since he had been paid for playing baseball before the Olympics, Thorpe was stripped of his medals in 1913 because he was decreed to not be an amateur athlete. It wasn’t until 1983 that his medals were reinstated by the International Olympic Committee. After the Olympics, Thorpe played a major role in the creation of the NFL as he played for the Canton Bulldogs. Thorpe was elected president of the American Professional Football Association in 1920 and they turned into the NFL two years later. Even though Thorpe died in 1953, an ABC Sports poll conducted in 2000 ranked Thorpe as the best American athlete of the century. Since sports have moved to picking one sport and focusing on that at a very early stage, an athlete like Jim Thorpe is very unlikely to ever be seen again.

Honorable Mention: Wayman Tisdale, basketball in Los Angeles 1984