Thorpe gets his due 110 years after double gold at Stockholm Games

A 110 years after Jim Thorpe won the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Games, the American who was stripped of his medals for infringing amateur rules at the time will now go down in history as the sole winner of the two events.

The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) - the predecessor of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) - deemed Thorpe was not an amateur as he had received payments for making appearances for a North Carolina baseball team before the Olympics.

Thorpe, a Native American and one of the 20th century's greatest athletes having also played professional baseball and American football, was stripped of his medals in 1913 after reports of the payments appeared in U.S. newspapers.

But in 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially reinstated his medals, with his children accepting them on his behalf. However, he was still deemed a co-champion in both events.

On Friday, the IOC said Sweden's Hugo Wieslander, who was upgraded to the gold after Thorpe was stripped of his decathlon title, had never accepted the gold because he always maintained Thorpe was the "sole legitimate Olympic gold medallist".

Norway's Olympic committee said Ferdinand Bie made a similar declaration when he was named the winner of the pentathlon.

The IOC announced that Thorpe's name will henceforth be displayed as the sole gold medallist in the decathlon and the pentathlon, with the silver medals going to Wieslander and Bie, respectively.

"This is a most exceptional and unique situation, which has been addressed by an extraordinary gesture of fair play from the National Olympic Committees concerned," IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement.

The athletes who were awarded silver and bronze