My favorite Olympic guy

Detroit Free Press
MICHAEL ROSENBERG: Cheek decides charity tops win
$25,000 donated to Right to Play

BY MICHAEL ROSENBERG
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

February 14, 2006

TORINO, Italy -- One way or another, the race was going to end with a gift.

As Joey Cheek loosened up before the final 500-meter race of his life, his girlfriend, Eleanor Collins, sat in the stands, knitting a scarf. She planned to give it to him for Valentine's Day.

Cheek had something much bigger in mind.

But first he had to finish skating.

Cheek won the gold medal Monday by two-thirds of a second, the speedskating equivalent of a three-touchdown blowout. Then the 26-year-old from North Carolina made real news: He would take his entire gold-medal bonus from the U.S. Olympic Committee and give it to Right to Play, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids in disadvantaged parts of the world.

"I think that's $25,000," Cheek said. "I've never won a gold medal, so I don't know."

It is indeed $25,000. (I've never won a gold medal either, but I looked it up.) And Cheek might give even more, because if he wins a medal in the 1,000-meter race Saturday, he'll donate that, too.

Of course, he could have donated his winnings without telling anybody. But Cheek wants to get the word out, and he is calling on Olympic sponsors to match his donation, which should bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to Right to Play. (You can help too: Go to www.righttoplay.com and click "Donate" under "how to help.")

"In the Darfur region of Sudan, there have been tens of thousands of people killed," Cheek said. "My government has labeled it a genocide. I will be donating it specifically to a program to help refugees in Chad, where there are over 60,000 children who have been displaced from their homes."

A few days ago, while he could have been thinking about his chance at gold, Cheek walked into the Right to Play office in the Athletes Village. He wanted to make sure the money would really go to the kids, instead of administrative costs or red tape. And while he was there, he ran into Johann Olav Koss, who just happens to be Joey Cheek's hero.

Twelve years ago, Koss won three gold medals in Lillehammer. Then he got to work. He founded a charity, Olympic Aid, which became Right to Play.

Cheek and Koss sat down for a cup of coffee -- a gold medalist and a gold-medalist-to-be, in the Athletes Village at the Olympics, talking about children in the Sudan.

"I love what I do," Cheek said. "It's a great job. I've seen the entire world, and I've met amazing friends.

"But honestly, it's a pretty ridiculous thing. I mean, I skate around the ice in tights, all right? If you keep it in perspective, I've trained my whole life for this, but it's really not that big a deal. But because I've skated well, and because I now have 15 seconds of microphone time, I have the ability to raise some awareness and raise some money."

A pretty ridiculous thing?

Doesn't this guy have an agent?

A golden gesture

It's strange. We came into these Olympics talking about Bode Miller, who complains that the Games are all about money and medals, instead of the Olympic ideal. Then Joey Cheek comes along and wraps his money, his medal and the Olympic ideal into one giant package and hands it to us.

A couple hours earlier, Cheek seemed like just another medal hopeful in a not-quite-full skating rink. When he finished his first race (the 500 is a combination of two timed races), he was way out in front of the field, and he exulted.

It seemed like he knew he could win gold. He knew so much more.

Collins went down to the ice between races to say hi to her boyfriend and give him a kiss. She and her family wore shirts with "The Fastest Cheeks On Ice" written on them. Eleanor's sister, Kirsten Collins, and Kirsten's friend, Carissa Wodehouse, are also here blogging about their Olympics adventure.

It is the kind of support that comes with only the best intentions. But it can make an athlete feel like if he sneezes, the universe will shake. And for a day, why not feel that way? How many of us ever do anything as cool as win a gold medal? Why not bask for a day?

Here is why not:

"I've learned how news cycles work," Cheek said, "and I've learned that there is a gold medal tonight, and tomorrow there's another gold medalist. So I could take the time and discuss how wonderful I feel, or I could use it for something productive."

Mission accomplished. As soon as Cheek opened his mouth at the postrace news conference, you could feel the average heart rate speed up in the room. Reporters from the biggest papers in the United States were there, along with NBC cameras, and Cheek had just dropped a wonderful story in our laps. And we could all be pleased about it, because this isn't just a feel-good story -- it is a story you feel good writing. All of us. As Wodehouse said, "Our blog is gonna rock!"

How unselfish was this announcement? Well, after a decade of competitive skating, Cheek will start college in the fall -- possibly at an Ivy League school -- and the four-year bill will probably come to at least $200,000. So it's not like he has $25,000 stuck in the corner of his wallet.

But the $25,000 is only a small piece of it. On the biggest speedskating day of a life dedicated to speedskating, Cheek decided this would not be a speedskating story.

A speedskating circle

This is a speed-skating story. Four years ago, in Salt Lake City, Kalamazoo native Kip Carpenter surprised everybody by taking bronze in this very event. Carpenter went on Jay Leno. A young woman named Brittany Merchant was watching and concluded that Carpenter was "hot."

Merchant looked Carpenter up online. She e-mailed with him. A year later, she finally went to Salt Lake City to meet him, and for moral support, she brought her best friend, Eleanor Collins.

Carpenter and Merchant never dated. But Eleanor and Joey have been together ever since.

"She's really good about keeping him on task on some things," said Joey's mother, Chris. Eleanor is the organized one. Joey is the dreamer. But this time, Joey stayed on task himself.

When Joey Cheek said he was taking advantage of his 15 seconds of microphone time, he meant it: He announced his gift because that was the best way to get matching donations. He didn't do it just so everybody would think he was a great guy.

Heck, before he had his microphone time, he barely talked about his plan.

To anyone.

"He said he wanted to help out," Eleanor said after Joey's announcement. "I figured he'd just volunteer his time."

Contact MICHAEL ROSENBERG at 313-222-6052 or rosenberg@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2005 Detroit Free Press Inc.



Giving to others is Cheek's gold standard
By Tom Weir, USA TODAY

TORINO — Speedskater Joey Cheek regularly gives reporters lessons on how a length of PVC pipe, a can of hair spray and fire can be employed to make a cannon that launches potatoes 300 feet.

The T-shirts his friends are wearing at the Winter Olympics say, "Fastest Cheeks on Ice." And the self-described bookworm is the first to acknowledge that his last name, appropriately, rhymes with geek.

But the often-comical Cheek turned serious Monday after his runaway victory in long-track speedskating's 500 meters. (Related: Cheek skates his way to gold)

Cheek, 26, announced he won't keep the $25,000 that the U.S. Olympic Committee awards to gold medalists. Instead, he will donate it to a program to help the thousands of Sudanese children who have been turned into refugees by warlords.

With the gesture, Cheek is attempting to follow in the steps of his idol, Johann Olav Koss.

After Koss' triple gold medal performance in the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, the Norwegian donated prize money to Olympic Aid, a humanitarian organization that helped war victims in the 1984 Winter Olympic city of Sarajevo.

"The things he has done have been an absolute inspiration to me," Cheek said. "He has lived his life in the manner that I hope to live my life."

Olympic Aid since has been renamed Right to Play, and Koss serves as president and CEO. Cheek has designated that his 500-meter prize money go to help youth programs for the Sudanese at refugee camps in Chad.

UNICEF's website says 1.4 million Sudanese children, including 500,000 age 5 or younger, have been displaced from the Darfur region by militia groups that have destroyed villages.

"For me, the Olympics have been the greatest blessing," Cheek said. "I always felt that if I ever did something big like this I wanted to be prepared to give something back."

That chance seemed possible in late January, when Cheek won the World Sprint Championships.

Going into the 2002 Winter Olympics he had never medaled in an international competition yet took a surprise bronze medal in the 1,000. With the World Sprints championship — won despite arriving in the Netherlands from the USA with just two days to prepare — Cheek knew he again was on a perfectly timed roll.

"I thought I might actually have a shot at doing something great at the Olympics, and if I did, I wanted to make it meaningful," Cheek said.

Trying to put his skating fame in perspective, Cheek said, "What I do is great fun. I love what I do. It's a great job. I've seen the entire world and I've met amazing friends."

Then he added: "Honestly, it's a pretty ridiculous thing. I mean, I skate around on ice in tights, right?"

By Olympic standards, Cheek won the 500 with ridiculous ease.

The results were determined by combining the times from two rounds of the 500. Of the 37-man field, Cheek's times of 34.82 and 34.94 seconds were the day's only sub-35-second performances.

"I don't know how I skated that fast," Cheek said. "I'm grateful that I did. I've always dreamed I would skate that fast."

The key to his recent racing, he said, is that he has been more relaxed than ever.

Cheek said he arrived in Torino in a comfort zone, because he already had an Olympic medal.

"This Olympics has been 10 times easier for me," Cheek said last week. "The only impression I want to leave is just how grateful I am to get this chance again."

That inner peace grew after talking with Koss during the weekend and putting his donation plan in place. At the starting line, he was skating as much for those African children as himself.

"I think on some level it is empowering to think of somebody other than yourself," Cheek said.

Cheek glided through both rounds while other greats struggled. World recordholder Joji Kato of Japan placed sixth. The USA's Casey FitzRandolph, the defending gold medalist, slipped in the first round and placed 12th.

Cheek's mother, Chris, wasn't surprised by her son's donation.

"He's always been willing to take a stand and speak up for what's right," she said. "If there was a kid that somebody was picking on, he would be nice to that kid."

But, with a smile, she also addressed her son's nerdy side.

"He was really geeky," she said. "If he hadn't had skating, he wouldn't have been a well-rounded person, I don't think."

She added that she gave Cheek a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull when he was in the sixth grade in Greensboro, N.C., and that he still reads it before races.

"It's all about the journey, working hard and taking the risk," she said.

Cheek's girlfriend, George Washington University business major Eleanor Collins, also addressed Cheek's quirks. She noted the only thing Cheek wears beneath his racing skinsuit is Bjorn Borg underwear, sold only in Europe. Collins said she got a little tired of seeing him rotating the same two pairs.

"In the last year, he ripped a hole in both pairs," Collins said. "So I got him new ones when I was over in Sweden and gave them to him for Christmas."

Cheek's next speedskating journey will be Saturday in the 1,000, where he's considered a stronger competitor than in the 500. If he medals again, that prize money also will go to Right to Play.

After that, he'll have the World Cup finals, then be headed into skating retirement and his first days as a college student.

He has been turned down by Harvard, but he has applications pending at Yale, Stanford, North Carolina, Georgetown and Duke.

"I don't know who will let me in," Cheek said. "I hope somebody will."

After his performance and generosity Monday, one guesses there will be a few takers.