Medal count by country in the Men's Decathlon at the Summer Olympics 1912-2016
In addition to being the first gold medallist in this event, Jim Thorpe was also the only athlete to ever have been stripped of a medal in this event. Thorpe was found to have taken a professional baseball contract in the past, which went against the Olympics' strict amateurism rules at the time. He was subsequently stripped of all Olympic medals, although many have suggested that there was a racial element to this case, due to Thorpe's Native American ancestry and the lengths which the IOC went to strip him of his medal. Thorpe's medals were reinstated and eventually returned to his family in 1983, thirty years after his death. The other medals, however, were not redistributed and Thorpe shares the gold medal with Sweden's Hugo Wieslander; whose lower score is still the official score used today.