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By the time most of us had awakened Wednesday morning, Joey Cheek had started another international incident.

President Bush had already been called, and the White House was considering a response. Cheek was on the front page of The Washington Post.

Again.

As Bush was being briefed, he was preparing to make a trip halfway around the world to a place the former speedskater from Greensboro was no longer welcome.

Beijing, China.

Sometime Tuesday, in the hours leading to his own visit to the Olympic Games, officials of the Chinese government met with their advisers and deemed Cheek to be an undesirable, or something of the sort. His visa was revoked, basically banning the 2006 gold medalist from Chinese soil, and sparking a set of events that had Cheek shaking his head the morning after.

"I tell you, I just keep stepping into these international incidents," he said. "I don't know what it is."

Cheek called from Washington as he went through a maelstrom of reaction from the U.S. government, diplomatic officials, International Olympic Committee members to White House press secretary Dana Perino, who said the administration would denounce the decision to deny the visa.

Meanwhile, the Dudley High School graduate went through the usual routine when someone causes an international incident.

"Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, AP," he said. "I'm actually in the middle of an AP interview right now. I'll have to call you back later in the day when I can get a second. I have no idea when that will be."

Cheek apologized. He never got that second.

A hero from the 2006 Winter Games, he was going to Beijing not just as an Olympian but as the president and a founder of Team Darfur, an organization of athletes protesting China's role in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan.

Cheek formed the group in the months after the 2006 games, where he donated $40,000 in bonuses he received from the U.S. Olympic Committee to victims of the war in Darfur. He urged other athletes, and their sponsors, to do the same, eventually raising more than $1 million in the days following the Torino games.

Cheek carried the American flag in the closing ceremonies of those games. On Wednesday, the American delegation announced that Lopez Lomong, a Sudanese refugee and one of the Lost Boys from Darfur, would carry the U.S. flag in the opening ceremony in Beijing.

Cheek said the actions by the Chinese government had already caused a global reaction, one certainly unanticipated by the Chinese but expected by Cheek, who's a veteran of such things.

"I'm disappointed I'm not going to Beijing," he said. "But we'll get our message out. We expect we'll hit a billion to 1.5 billion people today with this news. Can you imagine? That's the world we live in now."

His face was on the main page of AOL News and Yahoo and MSN. He was on A1 of The Washington Post and The New York Times, mentioned on the morning shows of National Public Radio, all the television networks and almost certainly those abroad. He told them the same story over and over, humbly reminding them of his own Olympic exploits and the Olympic creed - once an Olympian always an Olympian.

Cheek wanted to go as an Olympian - "There's no such thing as a former Olympian," he said last year. And he wanted to go to continue to ask the international community to honor a tradition of observing the Olympic truce while the games are held. More than 200,000 people have died in Sudan during the struggle among ethnic tribesmen since 2003, and much of the protest has been over China's backing of the Arab militants pushing the tribesmen from their land.

China is Sudan's largest oil customer and is reported to be its chief arms supplier, buying oil with Chinese-made tanks, bombers, helicopters and guns. Cheek said last year more than 2.5 million people have been displaced.

He called early Wednesday and said he hoped he could call again. But he had no idea when that would be. He said to say "Hey" to everybody in Greensboro, and he was already thinking of what he'll tell his classmates when he returns to Princeton University in the fall.

"I'll have a great answer when they ask me what I did for my summer vacation," Cheek said.

He started another international incident.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com