China revokes visa for Olympic gold medalist Cheek '11

The 2006 speed skating champion co-founded Team Darfur, an organization of Olympic athletes who seek to draw attention to violence in the Darfur region of Sudan. China is a major consumer of oil produced in Sudan.

Cheek had planned to travel to Beijing to support the hundreds of athletes from around the world who have signed on as supporters of Team Darfur.

Cheek received the call from Chinese authorities just after 5 p.m. on Aug. 5, minutes after receiving an instant message from fellow Team Darfur co-founder Brad Greiner, who was also going to the Beijing games, saying Greiner’s visa had been revoked.

“I got this sinking feeling and then the phone rings, and it’s the Chinese consulate saying that your visa has been revoked,” Cheek told The Daily Princetonian in an interview on Aug. 6. “We were kind of shocked. I had received visa approval over a month ago, and I get the call less than 24 hours before I was supposed to hop on a plane. I was shocked it was so close to when I was supposed to leave.”

Cheek said that the revocation of his visa will limit his ability to “provide support for all the Team Darfur athletes.”

“I don’t know what kind of support I can offer them here,” he said.

In addition to Cheek and Greiner, 2004 synchronized swimming bronze medalist and Team Darfur member Kendra Zanotto, who had planned to attend the Beijing Games as a journalist, had her visa denied, Cheek said. He added that at least four athletes from other countries were approached by Chinese officials who said they needed to end their activism or else suffer consequences.

“This is one small example of a much broader effort by the Chinese government to pressure athletes to keep quiet on any sort of issue, to muzzle athletes whose only purpose is to help the people of Darfur,” Cheek said. “It looks like the Chinese government has been making a systematic, global effort to keep athletes from saying anything at all.”

After learning of the incidents, the White House announced that the United States was disturbed to learn China has revoked the visa and would challenge the decision, according to a statement by Press Secretary Dana Perino.

“We continued to press [the Chinese government],” Perinosaid when asked whether the U.S. government was taking action after Cheek’s visa had been revoked.

At the time, President Bush was on a trip through Asia that took him to Beijing for the Olympic opening ceremonies on Aug. 8.

The U.S. Olympic Committee had little power to influence the decision since Cheek is not competing in these games and was traveling as a private citizen. Cheek had not advocated a boycott of the 2008 games.

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Repeated requests for comment from the Chinese embassy, the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) went unanswered.

The announcement received worldwide media attention, and Cheek said in an e-mail after the Games that he unquestionably received more press in being barred from the Games than he would have received had he been allowed to attended the Games.

“But I think it stood as a stern warning to anyone not to even think about speaking out on any issue or there would be reprisals,” he said, adding that Team Darfur has never advocated breaking any of the IOC rules or the laws of the host country.

“We feel that the Olympics can be a great force for the advancement of human rights the world over — just as intended when the Games were created,” he explained.

Cheek said that he had spoken with several Team Darfur athletes who felt there was no real way to raise awareness in Beijing, saying the IOC and Chinese government “really put a lid on anything that they didn’t want discussed.”

“That being said,” he went on, “I know that several athletes were able to do interviews while in Beijing and many have offered to do even more in their home countries.”

A native of North Carolina, Cheek, 29, won the gold medal in the 500-meter speed-skating event and a silver medal in the 1,000 meters at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy.

He made headlines after donating his $40,000 prize money to Right to Play, a humanitarian organization that uses sports to help underprivileged children around the world. Cheek encouraged other athletes to donate their prizes, and the effort raised more than $1 million.

For his efforts, Cheek was asked to carry the U.S. flag at the closing ceremonies.

International experts estimate that more than 200,000 people have been killed and roughly 2.5 million displaced since African tribesmen began fighting the Sudanese government in 2003. Sudan says Western governments and the media have exaggerated the scale of the conflict.

On July 1, Team Darfur sent a letter to world leaders from 130 athletes calling for an Olympic Truce in Darfur. The truce tradition began during the ancient games in Greece, when fighting stopped to allow athletes to travel safely to and from the competition.

In Sept. 2007, the Ivy League ruled that Cheek was ineligible to play on the sprint football team because he is a professional athlete.