Het Joey Cheek is OK topic

quote:

Op zondag 19 februari 2006 05:58 schreef popolon het volgende:
En ook z'n prijzengeld voor de zilveren medaille gaat naar het goede doel.

Wat een vent.

Best mooi, 't is echt niet zo dat de Amerikaanse schaatsers, in tegenstelling tot de Nederlanders, zo'n geweldig inkomen hebben.

Kan een mod de titel veranderen in " Cheek is a hero"

bvd.

Jeetje wat een held zeg

Ik moet telkens als ik Cheek zie aan kapitein Kirk denken

Open brief van Sports Illustrated aan:

Harvard University
Office of Undergraduate Admissions
February 18, 2006

Dear Sir or Madam:

Imagine my joy upon learning that your office is "happy to read helpful letters from people directly familiar with applicants' lives outside the classroom." I've been in Turin for more than a week and I've become directly familiar with American speedskater Joey Cheek. Perhaps the name rings a bell.

About three hours ago, Cheek won a silver medal in the men's 1,000-meter long track event at the Oval Lingotto. It was a glorious race. The arena was electric. A Dutch band played a funky version of Volare and the stands were filled with a melange of nations: Orange-clad speedskating fans from Holland cheered on Jan Bos and Erben Wennemars. The Yanks were there, too, cheering heartily for Joey, Casey FitzRandolph and Shani Davis. Joey just missed out on winning the gold. He was gracious as a silver medalist. He congratulated Davis and skated around the ice, waving to the fans in the crowd.

I'm not sure how many Olympic medalists are skating around Harvard Yard these days, but I can assure you Joey has spent his time in Turin very productively. Last Monday he won the gold medal in the 500-meter long-track event. He entered the race as the defending world sprint champion but had to topple the world record holder at the distance, Japan's Joji Kato. He was the only skater to break 35 seconds in both parts of the race and finished with a combined time of 69.76 seconds. He grabbed a flag, and tears flowed down his face.

Of course, all of this happened in Turin, two months after your office rejected his early-decision application. Yesterday I spoke with his mother, Chris, just to confirm the facts. On Dec. 12, Harvard University e-mailed Joey to let him know that his application had been denied. "He was so disappointed," Chris Cheek said. "He said, 'Mom, they rejected me.' That was his dream."

Like a speedskating race, I'm sure it was close. Your office, according to Chris Cheek, said there were some reservations since Joey had been out of school for 10 years. She said you called him a perfect transfer student down the road. Joey called you a couple of times, but the decision stood.

There's no easy way to put this: You screwed up. Big time.

It's OK. It happens. (Yes, it even happens to Harvard people.)

A little background: Joey graduated from Dudley High in Greensboro, N.C., in 1997, but I can assure you he has used his time productively over the past nine years. He left his family at the age of 16 to move to Calgary to become a world-class speedskater. He won a bronze medal in the 1,000 at the Salt Lake Games and received a phone call for his efforts from President Bush (who, as you know, has a masters from the Harvard Business School).

Since then, Joey has continued to excel in his craft; in 2006 he was world sprint champion. His application probably covered this, but Joey isn't simply a jock. He's a self-taught guitar player, too. His favorite magazine is the The Economist (yes, he should have said the Harvard Business Review) and his favorite actress is Natalie Portman (hopefully, that negated the magazine answer).

I see that Harvard has a rich tradition of gold-plated figure skaters: Tenley Albright Blakeley (class of '55), Dick Button (class of '52) and Hayes Alan Jenkins Law (class of '59). But I checked the Ivy League Web site just to be sure and you've never had an Olympic long-track speedskater as part of your alumni. I also learned from your own site that Harvard students are "scholars, community volunteers, journalists, artists, athletes, actors, musicians, and enthusiasts of many other kinds."

I didn't see the word philanthropist on that list, but I'm sure they're nice to have around Cambridge as well. After Joey won the 500, he announced that he was donating the $25,000 he received from the United States Olympic Committee to the Right to Play organization, which promotes sports for children in the third world. After winning the silver earlier today, Joey said that he planned to also donate the $15,000 he will receive for that medal. He said that eight or nine companies had decided to match his original donation and that his efforts in Turin have so far raised $250,000. The person who oversees Right to Play is Johann Olav Koss, the former speedskater and one of the great Olympians of the 20th century. He won our magazine's Sportsman of the Year in 1994, and told one of our reporters today that because of Joey's efforts, donations are coming in from people in Norway and the Netherlands.

Here is what Joey said to the world's press following his win in the 500:

"I've always felt that if I ever did something big like this I wanted to be prepared to give something back. So ... I'm going to be donating the entire [Operation Gold] sum the USOC gives to me, which I think is around $25,000, I'm not sure, to the organization that Johann Olav Koss either started or gave to in 1994. And I'm going to be asking all of the Olympic sponsors that give hundreds of millions of dollars if they will also maybe match my donation to a specific project. As you know, there's been some media, but not a ton, especially in the U.S., in the Darfur region of Sudan. There has been tens and tens of thousands of people killed. My government has labeled it a genocide, and so I will be donating money specifically to refugees in Chad where there are over 60,000 children who have been displaced from their homes. And hopefully, if the region ever gets stabilized, hopefully from pressure through the United Nations or from the U.S. government or from some other agency, then we can go into Sudan and start programs for refugees there. For me, the Olympics have been the greatest blessing. If I retired yesterday, I would have gotten everything in the world from speedskating and from competing in the Olympics. So for me to walk away today with a gold medal is amazing. And the best way to say thanks that I can think of is to help somebody else, so I'm going to be donating my money. I'm going to try and talk to the Olympic sponsors, and if there's anyone in particular in the U.S. or Europe who's going to be reading these articles, if you'd like, check out Right to Play. You can check out their Web site, it's (http://www.righttoplay.com/)."

Joey has tentative plans to go to Zambia in a couple of months and invited journalists along for the trip. When I spoke with his mother, the first thing she asked me was, "Are you going with Joey to Africa?"

This is a family that appears to care about things beyond an oval.

Though Harvard was clearly the No. 1 school on his wish list, his mother said he had applied to other schools. The list includes Columbia, Duke, North Carolina, NYU, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. Joey said he plans to quit the sport following the Games and will study economics. His mother, who lives in North Carolina, said she wouldn't mind if he became a Tar Heel, at least for a year.

I still think your office should admit that it made a mistake and invite Joey Cheek to be part of the Harvard class of 2010. But as an alum of Columbia, we're more than happy to add an Olympic gold medalist with a humanitarian bent to our little university family.

Enjoy the rest of the Games.

Warm regards,
Richard Deitsch
Sports Illustrated

---------------------------------------------------------

die cheek is de enige amerikaan die ik wel mag

Joey Cheek is meer dan ok en hij moet Harvard gewoon het heen en weer laten krijgen.

quote:

Op maandag 20 februari 2006 20:51 schreef WEST het volgende:
die cheek is de enige amerikaan die ik wel mag

Cheek is zwaar OK
_{Jon Stewart ook}

Mooie brief van Sports Illustrated.
Ik begin steeds meer een fan te worden van Joey Cheek en ik vind het gewoon bijna jammer dat hij gaat stoppen. Hoop voor hem dat Harvard nog op hun beslissing terugkomt.

quote:

Op maandag 20 februari 2006 20:50 schreef Brahimov het volgende:
The Yanks were there, too, cheering heartily for Joey, Casey FitzRandolph and Shani Davis.

Viel me trouwens wel op dat Hedrick niet in dit rijtje genoemd wordt. Vergeten lijkt me stug, als je als Amerikaanse journalist zelfs de moeite neemt om 'Jan Bos' en 'Erben Wennemars' juist te spellen. Apart...

Cheek komt wel terecht, in het sportgekke Amerika vinden ze het prachtig een kampioen als student te hebben.

Wordt het niet Harvard dan zijn er nog wel wat opties.

Er zijn veel meer van dit soor 'brieven' verschenen in de VS .....

February 13, 2006

Mr. William Fitzsimmons
Dean of Admissions
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138

Dear Mr. Fitzsimmons,

With all due respect, sir, are you stupid?

I have to ask since, apparently, you were the person who denied the application to the Harvard Class of 2010 of one Joey Cheek.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/speed_skating/news?slug=dw-cheekwins021306&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Cheek is toffe gast