Best in the World at the NMAI

Best in the World: Native Athletes in the Olympics

Coming to the National Museum of the American Indian If you are traveling to Washington DC in late May or during the summer, you will not want to miss the "Best in the World: Native Athletes" exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

On the 100th anniversary of the Olympic Games in which athletes Jim Thorpe, Sac and Fox, Duke Kahanamoku, Native Hawaiian, Andrew Sockalexis, Penobscot, and Lewis Tewanima, Hopi, represented the United States in Stockholm, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian presents "Best in the World: Native Athletes in the Olympics."

The exhibition opens Friday, May 25.

In 1912, Thorpe swept both the pentathlon and decathlon at the Olympic Games, becoming the first and only Olympian to accomplish such a feat and earning the accolades of King Gustav V of Sweden, who proclaimed Thorpe to be "the greatest athlete in the world." Thorpe was joined that year by fellow Native teammates Kahanamoku, who won the 100 meter freestyle; Sockalexis, who placed fourth in the marathon; and Tewanima, who won the silver medal and set an American record for the 10,000 meters that stood for more than 50 years until Billy Mills, Oglala Lakota, won the gold medal in Tokyo in 1964.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Review of Jim Thorpe: World's Greatest Athlete and Three Native Olympic Gold Medalists.

Below:  "Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympic Games."