They were real people with real families, and those families had real investment in the recognition that had come down through the decades.

Ferdinand Bie’s gold medal in the pentathlon, and Hugo Wieslander’s gold medal in the decathlon, were part of their athletic identities and their family histories.

To fully reverse the 1913 decision required confronting what that reversal meant for them.

The co-championship solution was a compromise — one that acknowledged Thorpe’s claim while not fully addressing the problem with how the previous decision had been made.

It was, as critics noted, a “sports absurdity.” But it was the kind of absurdity that allowed the IOC to make a gesture toward justice while avoiding the harder question of what complete justice required.