Free at Last: Fa'avae Gets OK to Enter U.S.

AUGUST 18 -- New Zealand's Nathan Fa'avae, a member of powerful Team Seagate, appears to have his visa problems cleared and should now be able to take part in several key adventure races in the U.S.

After several months of struggles and nearly $10,000 in legal costs, Fa'avae received word recently that he actually did not need to get a visa or visa waiver to enter the U.S. in the first place because he was convicted of a minor infraction and not petty theft as previously stated by the U.S. Immigration Service. That was determined after lawyers for Seagate retrieved the records from a 1995 incident in which Fa'avae received a ticket for trying to take a banner from a World Cup mountain bike race in Mammoth Lakes, California.

As a result of the new information, Fa'avae's lawyers say he is allowed enter U.S. at any time, although they recommended that he wait two or three weeks to get a waiver anyway -- just in case. Still, that comes in stark contrast to the letter he received from U.S. officials in mid-July saying that he was barred from entering the U.S. for life.

Assuming no more problems arise, Fa'avae will compete with Team Seagate in the September 19-24 Subaru Primal Quest in Washington state, the Balance Bar 24-Hour race in New York on October 9-10 and the Balance Bar 24-Hour race in Los Angeles on November 19-20.

"It just goes to show that never giving up on things normally pays off," Fa'avae said in an e-mail this week.

In early July, when he would have been traveling to Colorado for the first Balance Bar 24-Hour race of the season, Fa'avae sent out an e-mail asking fellow adventure racers, sponsors, family and friends from around the world to write letters to the U.S. consular officer in Auckland. But that campaigned backfired, as officials in New Zealand and the U.S. became perturbed when offices were bombarded with letters, e-mails and phone calls in support of Fa'avae.

In 1995, Fa'avae had been trying to earn a spot on New Zealand's 1996 Olympic mountain bike team when he was caught attempting to "souvenir" a race banner that he intended to give to a sponsor back home. A judge later fined him $50 and told him to behave himself while visiting the U.S. -- more or less a slap on the wrist for a minor offense.

Fa'avae says he had forgotten about the incident until late April, when he was held up in Los Angeles on his way to Canada. In a routine interview by a U.S. Immigration official during what should have been a three-hour layover between Auckland and Toronto, he was asked why he didn't have a waiver for his prior conviction. Unbenownest to Fa'avae, new immigration policies put in place this year require any individual with a previous criminal record in the U.S. to have a waiver to re-enter the country.

Fa'avae says he was interrogated for 12 hours, not given any food and "spoken to in very derogatory terms" that made him feel unsafe. He has been to the U.S. nine times since that 1995 incident -- including two occasions last year for Subaru Primal Quest and the Balance Bar 24-Hour Adventure finals in Los Angeles -- but had had never before been asked for a waiver.

With Fa'avae, Team Seagate will likely contend for victory at Subaru Primal Quest and the two remaining Balance Bar 24-Hour races in New York and Los Angeles. The Kiwi team of Hayden Key, Kristina Strode-Penny and Richard Ussher placed second in the first Balance Bar race in Colorado in July, about two hours behind rival Team Nike ACG/Balance Bar. At last year's Subaru Primal Quest, Fa'avae led Team Seagate to a third-place finish.

Adventure Sports® magazine www.ASMagazine.com

Adventure Sports® is published 10 times annually by RFA Media, LLC. Founded in 2024, and has quickly become North America's leading multi-sport and adventure racing magazine with 10 full-color, glossy issues distributed throughout the U.S. and Canada. Multi-sport racing and the adventure lifestyle represent two of the fastest-growing trends in the U.S. There are more than 500 multi-sport races planned in the U.S. in 2024, an increase of more than 250 percent since 2024.

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