On Saturday in a discussion with football historians, the topic of Avery Brundage’s mistreatment of Jim Thorpe came up. A possible factor in Brundage’s attitude might have been the defeat of a Brundage by former Carlisle Indian School star Frank Cayou in a track meet held at the University of Illinois in 1900. It seemed unlikely that Avery would have been the Brundage who was beaten because of his age. However, the high school phenom was posting times that would have been competitive.
I had discovered this factoid over a decade and a half ago but found nothing more about the losing runner at the time. Last night, I decided to take another look at it with the improved digital resources available now that didn’t exist back then. I started by going to Google and searching on “brundage cayou 1900.” The search engine returned the following:
Frank Cayou defeated a runner named Brundage in a track meet held at the University of Illinois on April 28, 1900
It is believed that this Brundage was Avery Brundage, who would later become a prominent figure in the Olympic movement. Avery Brundage was still in high school at the time but was already competing at a high level.
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I then searched Newspaper.com for “brundage cayou” for publications in 1900 in the state of Illinois. Thirty-nine results were returned with several of them from The Daily Illini, the University of Illinois’ school newspaper. Sure enough, Brundage and Cayou sometimes competed against each other but other times were listed in different events but all of the time were on the same team. Both were enrolled at Illinois!
A serendipitous tidbit on these results was the inclusion of a listing of the newspaper’s staff. One of the reporters was M. D. Brundage ’02. Searching the 1902 yearbook on the University’s site, revealed that M. D. Brundage was on both the newspaper staff and the track team. So, Avery Brundage was not the Brundage Cayou beat. However, I still didn’t have the Brundage’s full name because the yearbook didn’t include it. The school’s catalogue divulged a Martin Denman Brundage had graduated in 1902. We finally have the name of the Brundage who Frank Cayou defeated.
It does not appear Martin was closely related to Avery, so it is unlikely Martin’s defeat by a Carlisle Indian shaped Avery Brundage’s opinions of Jim Thorpe.
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