Swedish Gold Medalist Nils Van der Poel Dedicates Gold Medal from Beijing to Freeing Swedish-Hong Kong Bookseller Gui Minha

Speed skater gave his 10,000-meter gold medal to Angela Gui in a meeting this week to highlight her father’s illegal abduction and ongoing detention by the Chinese government

London, United Kingdom, (Friday, February 25, 2022) - This week, Swedish speedskater Nils Van der Poel, who won two gold medals (5000 m and 10,000 m events) in Beijing, dedicated his 10,000-meter gold medal to Gui Minhai, the Swedish-Hong Kong bookseller illegally abducted and detained in China. In a face-to-face meeting in Cambridge, UK, Van der Poel met and gave the medal to Angela Gui, the daughter of Gui Minhai and a board member of the Campaign for Hong Kong.

From Nils Van der Poel:

“Before I traveled to China, I had already decided on this course of action. While at the games, I was fully engaged in the competition and the Olympic atmosphere. Of course, I would've like to be able to display my medal to friends and family back home, look at it and reminisce. But today, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice to give my 10 000m gold to Gui Minhai. Instead, it makes my medal more meaningful to me. This puts my memories of these past years in a different light. I am happy that I can use my medal to help people around the world realize that there are causes of far greater importance than sports.”

“It came down to a moral matter. I am not the voice of all Olympians, but to me, it's this simple: My friends and I dedicated our lives to strive for excellence within sports, the Chinese regime chose to use our dreams as a political weapon to legitimize their regime. To me, that was personal, and I felt exploited.”

“I wish that the IOC in the future could explicitly announce a policy stating that a dictatorship should never again host the Olympics. And if no democracy wants to host, then I support the solution of not hosting the games. I would've appreciated it if the IOC had made that decision for the 2022 Olympics. However, I was not strong enough to boycott alone, and I'm happy I didn't, my dreams were too strong, and I'm grateful for today. I feel like I could honor both my dreams and my morals in a good way.”

From Angela Gui:

“Today marks the second anniversary of the announcement of my father’s prison sentence, published on a local Ningbo court’s website following a trial held in secret. Nils’ decision to dedicate his medal to my father and the growing number of people like him is an important statement of solidarity with political prisoners, who are often told that the outside world has forgotten them.”

From Samuel Chu:

“Beijing used the spectacle of the recently completed Winter Olympics to distract and whitewash its egregious and systematic human rights abuses, its illegal abduction and detention of Gui Minhai and thousands of others, and the dismantling of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms.

The decision to allow China to host the games again was a disgrace - and it was made possible by the complicity, silence, and support of many corporations and individuals who choose profits over the lives and freedom of millions repressed by the Chinese government. Nils’ generous and selfless act stands in stark contrast to those of CCP enablers like the IOC.

We stand with Nils; we stand with Angela; we stand with Gui Minhai. We will not cease in our struggle to free Gui Minhai and every political prisoner in Tibet, in the Uyghur homeland, in Hong Kong, and in all of China is freed.”

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