It was the first time the decathlon, which had been introduced in 1911, was held at the Olympics; a different ten-event competition, the all-around, had been contested in St. Louis in 1904.

[2] Jim Thorpe's gold medal was stripped by the International Olympic Committee in 1913, after the IOC learned that Thorpe had taken expense money for playing baseball, violating contemporary Olympic amateurism rules, before the 1912 Games.

In 2022, the IOC decided to display Thorpe as the sole gold medal winner after the Swedish Olympic Committee and Wieslander's surviving family members declared Thorpe should be acknowledged as the sole Olympic champion.

Philbrook scored over 1000 points in the event by breaking the previous Olympic record (listed as 41.46 metres in the 1912 official report, though actually only 40.89 set by Martin Sheridan in 1908).

Thorpe's disqualification in 1913 and subsequent reinstatement 70 years later resulted in the top 4 finishers being awarded medals—2 gold, a silver, and a bronze.