Chinese gymnasts

1. Break this story? In China? Good luck with that.

2. Considering how many medals U.S. competitors have had to hand back recently, haven't we kind of given up our right to be outraged about other countries cheating?

 

I never said I was impressed.

And I still find "little girls" gymnastics to be a form of child abuse.

 

Bela has proof but nobody can understand a damn word he says, so it will never get out!

 

Agreed. Yes, the American girls choked when they had every chance to win the gold. But rules are rules, no matter what. If the rules say girls must be 16 and China broke that rule (again, everyone knows they did), they should be stripped of their gold.

 

I thought China was exempt from the rules ... oh, wait, that's just with the Kyoto Treaty.

 

I'm not sure being 13 is an advantage. Wouldn't that 13-year-old be a bit more nervous under pressure than a 16-year-old (or the 20-year-old U.S. girl who apparently couldn't handle the pressure and fell twice like giraffe trying to ice-skate)?
And since when are gymnastics people so worried about kids competing too young? For the Olympics to have an age limit is ridiculous, because the training these girls are in since they were 3 is probably a lot tougher than actually competing.

 

No one says the rules aren't ridiculous. They're just the rules.

But I would wager that an 8-year-old Chinese girl manages to somehow find a lot more gym time than an 8-year-old American gal.

 

I agree that I'm skeptical how much of an advantage a 13-year old would have over someone like Shawn Johnson. But it goes back to basics - rules are rules and they usually have them for a reason. I don't know why the FIG settled on 16 instead of 17 or 15. It doesn't matter. Sixteen is the rule. Everyone knows China broke it, and they should be held accountable for it.

 

Now warming up in the bullpen for the Chinese baseball team...

Seriously, if an investigation is launched by the IOC, there's a better chance of finding a legitimate birth certificate of a martian than there is for one of these gymnasts. Any documentation that comes forward will almost certainly "prove" these girls are 16.

 

State-media story fuels questions on gymnast's age

By JOHN LEICESTER
Associated Press Writer
Thu Aug 14, 8:54 AM ET

BEIJING - Just nine months before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government's news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal this week.

In its report Nov. 3, Xinhua identified He as one of "10 big new stars" who made a splash at China's Cities Games. It gave her age as 13 and reported that she beat Yang Yilin on the uneven bars at those games. In the final, "this little girl" pulled off a difficult release move on the bars known as the Li Na, named for another Chinese gymnast, Xinhua said in the report, which appeared on one of its Web sites, http://www.hb.xinhuanet.com

The Associated Press found the Xinhua report on the site Thursday morning and saved a copy of the page. Later that afternoon, the Web site was still working but the page was no longer accessible. Sports editors at the state-run news agency would not comment for publication.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080814/ap_on_sp_ol/oly_gym_underage_chinese

 

Your move, President Rogge ...

 

Citing other bad behavior to justify other bad behavior?