My New Olympic Dream

I became a state, then a regional, and finally a national champion on in-line skates all before I was 15, but in 1994 I watched the Winter Olympics and saw speed skating for the first time. And I knew that was what I wanted to do. I moved to Canada from my native North Carolina a month after my 16th birthday to become a speed skater. I found that I loved the feeling of racing on ice even more than on wheels. I climbed the ranks in the United States as a junior, then as a senior and eventually became a world champion. In 2002, at 21, I competed in the Salt Lake City Olympics and won my first medal -- a bronze.

The life of an Olympic athlete is a bit strange. We spend countless hours toiling for years for almost no money in the hope of being a hundredth of a second better than our competition in a sport that often no one watches except once every four years during this great festival. But aside from the medal count and the endless patriotism that bombards every Olympic viewer, there is an incredible community within the Olympic Village. Athletes from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas come together and compete for the same prize. And when our events are over, we come back to the Olympic Village, and we sit down and eat together.

This community was the defining aspect of my Olympic experience, and it's what led me, ultimately, to Darfur. I could sit with an athlete from another land, and even though we had very different backgrounds, we had the Olympic experience in common. Just to earn my place in that Olympic Village cafeteria, I'd spent years competing around the world. During those travels, I began to see that it wasn't just athletes that I had this fellowship with but people in every nation. I met great friends in Europe who would invite me into their homes and where we would eventually realize that both of our grandfathers had fought in World War II -- against each other. I made friends from China who had also left their homes at an early age to begin training, and even though we barely understood each other, no one in the world smiled bigger at me when we would bump into each other. My other constant companion in that world travel was the international news coverage of atrocities that I didn't hear much about on the news at home.

It might seem funny that a speed skater from North Carolina would focus on what was then a somewhat obscure crisis in Africa, but it all came back to my Olympic views. Ultimately, I feel no different than a person born in any other area of the world, except perhaps a bit luckier. And if people were gunning down my family, I would certainly want the world to help. So that's what I tried to do.

After the Olympics in Turin, I began traveling the world again -- not to compete or train, but to talk with people about having won. I also spoke at many Darfur rallies, including one in Washington in the spring of 2006, sharing the bill with Elie Wiesel and George Clooney. Somehow, I had gotten from sprinting at record speed around an ice rink in tights to sharing a stage with a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Holocaust survivor and an Academy Award winner. But the more I learned about the conflict, the more confident I became about speaking out -- and the more urgency I felt.

Seven months after the Washington rally, I was on a stage in New York, essentially back where I'd started. The same "Save Darfur" posters were draped on the podium. The same heartbreaking statistics were being repeated over a bad sound system to a large crowd. But people were still dying by the scores, and despite the efforts of the activist community, the international community was not really doing anything.

Star power isn't fixing anything in Darfur yet, either. Although celebrities can raise awareness about the conflict, ultimately only government officials can affect the situation on the ground. I saw that when I traveled with Clooney, actor Don Cheadle, Kenyan distance runner Tegla Loroupe and others as part of a delegation to Egypt and China in December 2006. The U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution that year calling for peacekeeping forces to protect civilians in Darfur, but Sudan was able to stall and eventually ignore it.

In Beijing, we spoke with government and business leaders: two movie stars, a speed skater, a distance runner and some activists facing people we thought had the power to really help. We think this is not right, we said gently, seeking to engage the Chinese in a positive way. Our message: We hope that, if nothing else, you will stop obstructing U.N. efforts to install robust international protection in Darfur. They met with us. They said thank you for coming. They said they think this is an internal issue in Africa, and that it's not really our business to fix it or discuss it. Then they invited us to tour the Olympic venues in progress, hoping to snap a few photos of smiling movie stars in front of the cranes and half-finished stadium.

I left feeling very frustrated.

I channeled some of that frustration into the organization I started last year with Brad Greiner, a water polo player, called Team Darfur. We're trying to recruit athletes who will use their time in the spotlight to help save lives in Darfur and show the world that these people still desperately need our help. So far, nearly 350 athletes from 60 countries have signed on with Team Darfur. And quite a few of those athletes will be in Beijing in August, including gymnasts from Europe, basketball players from Africa, swimmers from the Caribbean and softball players from North America.

For some, though, joining this particular team is a risk, one they fear could jeopardize their spot on the Olympic team. I recently spoke with a Beijing-bound swimmer who is committed to the Darfur cause. He attended a symbolic torch relay on behalf of victims of Sudan's genocidal regime and has spoken to international reporters about the issue. But he wants to be sure that whatever he says now won't compromise his opportunity to compete in Beijing -- not just because he has spent his whole life training for his Olympic moment, but because he realizes that his status as an Olympian will give him a wider platform to raise awareness.

That has certainly been my experience. Had I not gone to Turin, the local paper might have said, "Hometown Boy Forgoes Olympics for Cause." But that's it. The most important -- and most effective -- means of addressing China's economic interdependence with Sudan is to go to Beijing, compete and speak out.