For Thorpe, the athletics were also something more immediate: they were the arena in which his specific gifts could be fully expressed, and in which the losses and disruptions of his early life could be, temporarily at least, set aside.

He was not the most educated student at Carlisle.

He was not the most well-adjusted.

He ran away from the school multiple times, drawn back to Oklahoma and to the ranch where he had grown up, unable to fully commit to the institutional life the school demanded.

But on the track and on the football field, the hesitations and ambivalences disappeared.

What remained was a person of extraordinary capability, competing against the best opposition available and winning consistently.