Norway’s Ferdinand Bie has won Olympic gold in the pentathlon for 109 years, though has never won. On Friday, he lost gold.

Friday illuminated International Olympic Committee (IOC) that American Jim Thorpe would stand as the sole winner of five and ten games at the 1912 Olympics.

IOC President Thomas Bach said in a press release that they were pleased that they had reached a solution. This comes after the Swedish Olympic Committee and the Norwegian Confederation of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Committee (NIF) acknowledged that Thorpe was the rightful winner of the two exercises.

As such, Norway’s Ferdinand Bie and Sweden’s Hugo Wieslander lost gold medals from five and ten games respectively, having been awarded to them for Thorpe’s ban a year after the match.

The Secretary General of the NIF, Nils Einar Aas, said they were contacted by the IOC on 24 June.

– In this regard, we contacted the Norwegian Athletic Association to hear their views on the matter. They quickly confirmed that they had no objections in this case, but instead thought this was the correct and agreeable attitude, and at least fair play. There was also widespread support from the families of Norwegian and Swedish gold winners that Jim Thorpe was the rightful winner in these two drills, he told VG.

On this basis, the Norwegian Olympic Committee confirms that we want to support the IOC’s decision. This does not mean that the Olympic gold medal will be returned, but the list of results will be changed back to the original results, he said.

At the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912, Thorpe excelled in both the pentathlon and doubles, and won gold in both.

Norway’s Ferdinand Bie finished in second place in the pentathlon. And this could have happened, were it not for the fact that a journalist the following year revealed that Thorpe had played Minor League Baseball before the Olympics. He received payments to play, and was thus considered a professional athlete.

Thus, he was not allowed to participate in the Olympics. Thorpe lost the gold medal, and in 1913 was banned from all amateur sports as a result of the revelation.

In 1983, history took a new turn. A historian proved to the IOC that Olympic rules at the time required protests against competitors to take place within 30 days. As it took more than a year before Thorpe lost a medal, the IOC decided that Thorpe should be the co-winner in five and ten matches, along with Bie and Wieslander.

Thorpe never managed to get the medal back. He died in 1953, aged 65.

On the 110th day after Thorpe won gold at the stabbing, he is now back at the medal, following Friday’s decision from the IOC.

The backdrop is the initiative of IOC member Anita DeFrantz and the organization Bright Path Strong, who contacted the Swedish Olympic Committee and Wieslander’s surviving relatives. They asserted that Wieslander never received the gold, and believed that Thorpe was the rightful winner. Bie is also said to have refused to take over the gold, according to NTB.

Thus, Bie and Wieslander each received a silver medal – and Norway’s gold holdings at the summer Olympics have dropped from 62 to 61.

Bie’s gold went on to become Norway’s first Olympic gold in athletics. Now that he has been referred to silver, it is Helge Andreas Løvland who will remain in the history books as the first Norwegian Olympic winner in athletics. Løvland won tikampen at the Olympics in 1920.