The thirty years between Thorpe’s death in 1953 and the 1983 ceremony at the Biltmore Hotel were not years in which the campaign for reinstatement was static.

They were years in which the effort moved through different phases, ran into different obstacles, and eventually found the specific leverage point that could move the IOC.

The discovery of the time-limit rule was not made early.

For much of the period after Thorpe’s death, the argument for reinstatement rested on equity and fairness — on the argument that the punishment was disproportionate, that the rule had been applied selectively, that the payment Thorpe had received was too modest and too unrelated to his Olympic performance to justify removing him from the record.

These arguments were morally compelling and legally inadequate.