The protest was filed after the deadline.

The IOC’s own eventual admission — that the award to Thorpe was being restored because the protest had come outside the rules — confirms this.

The disqualification was not simply harsh; it was not correctly executed under the rules that governed the Games.

The racial context of 1913 America — the specific position of Native Americans in American society, the specific implications of having come through a boarding school system designed to eliminate Native identity, the specific vulnerabilities of someone who did not know the rules he was supposed to navigate — provides essential context for understanding why the disqualification happened and why it was sustained for as long as it was.

It does not simplify that context into a documented causal claim that specific individuals acted with racial motivation.