Jim Thorpe Trivia
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58 free Jim Thorpe trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Jim Thorpe won Olympic gold in mismatched shoes fished out of a bin, played major-league baseball and professional football and basketball, was the first president of what became the NFL, and ended up buried in a Pennsylvania town he had never visited. This quiz covers the whole story: the Sac and Fox boyhood in Indian Territory, the twin brother who died, Carlisle Indian School and Pop Warner, the 1911 upset of Harvard and the 97-yard run against Army with Eisenhower on the field. Then Stockholm 1912: the pentathlon and decathlon, King Gustav's "greatest athlete in the world", the ticker-tape parade, and the semi-pro baseball summers in Rocky Mount that cost him his medals. It follows him through the New York Giants and the Canton Bulldogs, the Oorang Indians, the World Famous Indians basketball tour, the Depression-era bit parts in Westerns, the Burt Lancaster biopic, the 1983 replica medals, the 2022 restoration as sole champion, and the long legal fight over his remains. Easy questions ask which sports he played; the expert tier asks for points totals, opponents and dates. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on Jim Thorpe and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on the Olympics, the NFL and Native American history.
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Q 01Jim Thorpe was a citizen of which Native American nation?
Sac and Fox
Sac and Fox is the nation Thorpe belonged to through his father Hiram, whose people had been moved from the Great Lakes region to Indian Territory in the 19th century.
Q 02At which Olympic Games did Thorpe win his two gold medals?
1912 Stockholm
1912 Stockholm, the fifth modern Olympiad, saw Thorpe win two multi-event titles in the same week; Sweden's new Olympic Stadium was built for those Games.
Q 03In which two events did Thorpe win Olympic gold?
Pentathlon and decathlon
Pentathlon and decathlon were his titles, won by wide margins; he also finished fourth in the high jump and seventh in the long jump at the same Games.
Q 04Why was Thorpe stripped of his Olympic titles in 1913?
He had been paid to play semi-professional baseball
He had been paid to play semi-professional baseball, earning as little as two dollars a game in the Eastern Carolina League in 1909 and 1910, which broke the amateur rules of the day.
Q 05In which year did the IOC present replica gold medals to Thorpe's children?
1983
In January 1983 the IOC presented replica medals to two of his children, after its October 1982 ruling that the 1913 disqualification had come long after the 30-day protest window.
Q 06In 2022 the IOC changed Thorpe's status in its records from what to what?
From co-champion to sole champion
From co-champion to sole champion: in July 2022 the IOC restored Thorpe as the outright 1912 winner of both events, with the heirs of the two runners-up and their national committees agreeing.
Q 07Thorpe was born in Indian Territory, in what is now which US state?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma, then Indian Territory, was his birthplace, near the town of Prague; no birth certificate has ever been found, and even the date is disputed between May 22 and May 28, 1887.
Q 08Thorpe's Sauk name, Wa-Tho-Huk, is usually translated as what?
Bright Path
Bright Path is the usual rendering of Wa-Tho-Huk; the fuller meaning is 'the bright path the lightning makes as it goes across the sky', tied to a storm at his birth.
Q 09What happened to Thorpe's twin brother Charlie?
He died of pneumonia at age nine
He died of pneumonia at age nine, in 1897, when both twins were at the tribal agency boarding school; Jim ran away from school several times afterwards.
Q 10Which school did Thorpe enter in 1904, where his athletic talent was discovered?
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the federal boarding school in Pennsylvania, took him in 1904; his father had earlier sent him to Haskell in Kansas to stop him running away.
Q 11Who coached Thorpe at Carlisle?
Pop Warner
Pop Warner, born Glenn Scobey Warner, coached Carlisle and was reluctant to risk his best track athlete in football until Thorpe ran through the whole defence twice in practice.
Q 12How did Thorpe first catch attention at Carlisle in 1907?
He beat the high jumpers in street clothes
He beat the high jumpers in street clothes: passing the track in 1907, he cleared 5 ft 9 in on a whim, a school record, and was put on the team.
Q 13Besides football and track, Thorpe won a 1912 intercollegiate championship in which unlikely activity?
Ballroom dancing
Q 21Thorpe's decathlon score of 8,413 points remained an Olympic record for how long?
Nearly two decades
Nearly two decades passed before Jim Bausch bettered the mark at the 1932 Los Angeles Games; it was Thorpe's first decathlon, and he placed in the top four in all ten events.
Q 22What footwear did Thorpe wear to win the decathlon after his own shoes were stolen?
A mismatched pair, one from a trash can
A mismatched pair, one from a trash can, is what the famous photo shows: a teammate lent one shoe, the other was a discard, and extra socks made the larger one fit.
Q 23Which monarch reportedly told Thorpe, "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world"?
Ballroom dancing was his 1912 intercollegiate title; at Carlisle he also played lacrosse, tennis, handball and baseball and boxed.
Q 14In 1911 Thorpe kicked all four field goals in Carlisle's 18-15 upset of which powerhouse?
Harvard
Harvard did not lose another game until 1915; Carlisle finished 11-1.
Q 15Which future US president played against Thorpe in Carlisle's 1912 win over Army?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower, then an Army halfback, recalled that Thorpe "never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw".
Q 16What did Thorpe do right after a penalty erased his 92-yard touchdown against Army in 1912?
Ran 97 yards for a touchdown
Ran 97 yards for a touchdown on the very next snap, by the famous account of the game Carlisle won 27-6 at West Point on November 9, 1912.
Q 17Which poet taught Thorpe at Carlisle and recalled his "ease in his gait"?
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore taught commercial subjects at Carlisle from 1911 to 1915; she wrote that in the football lineup he was "the epitome of concentration".
Q 18The 1912 Olympic pentathlon consisted of long jump, javelin, discus, a 200 m sprint and which fifth event?
1500 m run
1500 m run closed the competition, and Thorpe won it; he took four of the five events and was third in the javelin, which he had first thrown only that year.
Q 19Which future IOC president was Thorpe's teammate in the 1912 multi-event competitions?
Avery Brundage
Avery Brundage, sixth in the 1912 pentathlon and a decathlon dropout, became IOC president in 1952 and rebuffed attempts to reinstate Thorpe, saying "Ignorance is no excuse."
Q 20Which Swedish local favourite did Thorpe beat by 688 points in the decathlon?
Hugo Wieslander
Hugo Wieslander, runner-up with 7,724 points to Thorpe's 8,412, always maintained that Thorpe was the rightful winner of the decathlon.
King Gustav V of Sweden
King Gustav V of Sweden spoke the words at the medal ceremony; Thorpe's famous reply, "Thanks, King", is probably a later embellishment.
Q 24The challenge prize for Thorpe's pentathlon win had been donated by which ruler?
Czar Nicholas II of Russia
Czar Nicholas II of Russia gave the pentathlon challenge prize, a silver chalice shaped like a Viking ship; the Swedish king's trophy, a bronze bust of himself, went with the decathlon.
Q 25On his return from Stockholm, Thorpe was the star of what kind of New York celebration?
A ticker-tape parade
A ticker-tape parade up Broadway greeted the returning US Olympic team in August 1912; Thorpe said, "I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends."
Q 26Weeks after the Olympics, Thorpe broke Martin Sheridan's record to win which title at Celtic Park in New York?
AAU All-Around Championship
AAU All-Around Championship, a ten-event contest decided in a single day, fell to Thorpe with a record 7,476 points; Martin Sheridan, whose mark he broke, called him "the greatest athlete that ever lived".
Q 27For which minor-league town had Thorpe played semi-pro baseball in 1909 and 1910?
Rocky Mount, North Carolina
Rocky Mount, North Carolina, a Class D club in the Eastern Carolina League, had him as a pitcher and infielder in 1909 and 1910, and he played under his own name.
Q 28Which newspaper first reported in January 1913 that Thorpe had been paid to play baseball?
The Worcester Telegram
The Worcester Telegram, a Massachusetts daily, broke the story on 22 January 1913; the AAU's secretary James E. Sullivan pursued the case hard even though the public did not much care.
Q 29In his letter to the AAU, Thorpe explained he was "simply an Indian schoolboy" who did what?
Did not know that he was doing wrong
Did not know that he was doing wrong, he wrote, adding that he had done what several other college men had done, except that they had not used their own names.
Q 30With which Major League Baseball team did Thorpe sign in 1913?
New York Giants
New York Giants, the reigning National League champions under John McGraw, signed him in February 1913, though he saw little playing time; the last-place St. Louis Browns had also courted him.