Chinese Gymnasts Too Young To Compete, Web Documents Show
I didn't need a commentator telling me that there was a question of age to realize, as I was watching the female gymnasts compete earlier in the Olympic games, that I was looking at girls who definitely were not sixteen years old. Look, I was a teenager once. I have a teenage daughter. I have kids who have teenage friends. Some of these girls in question are definitely not sixteen...but the problem has been that nobody can prove it. The Chinese have produced the girls' passports and apparently that is all the IOC needs, because China has such a long history of being completely open and trustworthy:
Just last week, questions were raised about the ages of two of Yang's teammates. The New York Times reported that online records listed the gymnasts, He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan, as being too young for this Olympics, perhaps as young as 14.A national registry of gymnasts, which had been blocked online but was viewable through Google cache, listed He's birthday as Jan. 1, 1994. That date was also listed for her on a registration for an intercity competition in Chengdu, China.
Jiang was born on Oct. 1, 1993 and is not yet 15, according to a listing of junior competitors from the Zhejiang Province sports administration. The list of athletes included national identification card numbers into which birth dates are embedded. Chinese officials have produced passports showing that He and Jiang are 16, making them old enough to compete at the Games.
Well, the IOC may want to take a look at moar web documents recently found that show the age of some of these girls is definitely not sixteen:
Olympic gymnastics title contenders suddenly have one more thing to worry about other than the eight gold medals China claimed at the Tianjin World Cup last week. Her name is He Kexin.The 14-year-old newcomer to the national team, who was recruited last year, has raised a lot of eyebrows recently after she broke two world records on the uneven bars in as many months. She will be just one more weapon on an already star-studded Chinese Olympic squad.
Yeah, so? Well, this article was posted on May 23, 2008. Yep, this year. Ineligible to compete in Olympic gymnastics. And worse, China has "cleaned up" the article to now read that she is sixteen years old. Continued on the next page
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