But in 1983, the IOC was not prepared to fully undo what it had done in 1913.

It recognized the wrong.

It provided a gesture of remediation.

It refused to complete the reversal.

For the family, and for the advocates who had worked for decades to reach even this incomplete resolution, the partial reinstatement was better than nothing.

Grace Thorpe continued to advocate for full recognition.

The Wheaties cereal company did not put Thorpe on a box until 2001, after a letter-writing campaign — an absence that reflected, in miniature, how incomplete the popular recognition of what Thorpe had actually achieved remained decades after his death.

The question of whether the official Olympic record would ever be fully corrected became the next stage of a fight that had now lasted longer than Thorpe’s entire life.