Wa-Tho-Huk would've won anyway and he probably wasn't even aware of the rule

[theking]

 :

Thorpe's scandal-tainted 1912 golds still resonate, amaze. ... It was discovered that Thorpe, hoping to get scouted for the major leagues, had played minor league baseball over two summers in North Carolina, an infringement of the strict Olympic amateurism rules of the time. He was stripped of his gold medals.

The King of Sweden was certainly impressed.

“Sir,” King Gustav V told Thorpe, “you are the greatest athlete in the world.”