For many years the Chinese have been bringing athletes to the Olympic games who are not old enough to legally participate. Many officials have questioned China’s truthfulness when their athletes look so much younger than their counterparts. There are advantages in certain sports when an athlete is young. In gymnastics a younger person is lighter, more flexible and able to use these circumstances to gain a competitive advantage.
In the Beijing summer Olympics in 2008 the Chinese women’s gymnastics team was a gold medal favorite. There were three gymnasts that were favored to win many individual events and their past performances made other countries teams feel underprepared. Jiang Yuyuan, Yang Yilin and He Kexin all supposedly had just turned 16, thus making them eligible to complete in the 2008 summer games. Even though these girls documentation said they were 16 years old, they looked very young, even to the average observer. On July 27, 2008 the New York Times was able to find some proof that He Kexin was actually 14 and therefore was not eligible to compete in the Olympics games. Kexin’s coach showed the New York Times her passport and it said she was born in 1992 making her 16 during the Olympic Games. Famous gymnastics reporter Bela Karolyi stated this at a NBC interview about the Chinese gymnastics officials, “These people think we are stupid...We are in the business of gymnastics. We know what a kid of 14 or 15 or 16 looks like. What kind of slap in the face is this? They are 12, 14 years old and they get lined up and the government backs them and the federation runs away. There is an age limit and it can't be controlled”.
This is not the first time that China has tried to lie about their athletes ages. In the 2000 Sydney games Yang Yun lied about her true age. Three years before the Sydney Olympics, the International Olympic Committee had raised the age cut off to 16. This made a lot of atheltes ineligible to participate in the Sydney games. On Yang’s passport it said she was born on December 24, 1984 which would have had her turning 16 during the Olympics. After winning a bronze medal for the uneven bars Yang confessed to a news reporter that she and her coach lied about her age on her passport saying that she was really only 14. After the news that Yang Yun lied about her age to compete in the Sydney games the Olympic officials took away her bronze medal and gave it to the U.S. team who had won fourth place at the Olympics.
Not only did the Chinese lie about their athletes ages at the regular Olympics they also have been found lying about the ages of their Junior Olympics competitors as well. Officials took x-rays of some of the competitors’ bones and found out that many were older than the other competitors. One of them was even seven years older than the cut off age. They discovered that twenty percent of the competitors had misrepresented their age. Now the Chinese are testing each girl who competes at the Chinese Junior Olympics. They are subject to x-rays and/or blood work to ensure the rules regarding age are being followed.
This shows that many people will do anything to have their son or daughter compete in any type of Olympic Games. China is showing that they can have younger athletes that can compete with other athletes who are much older than they are. In my opinion I think it is wrong to have someone either older or younger to be competing when they are not supposed to, even if they are amazing at what they do. (623)
