China Acknowledges Gymnastics Team Age Confusion, Blames Bad Paperwork

China today acknowledged the confusion about the ages of its Olympic gymnasts. China's deputy sports minister blamed paperwork problems. ESPN has the story.

At last year's China's Cities Games, Chinese officials decided to move He Kexin, who won two gold medals during the Beijing Games, from a local team to the national team. China's deputy sports minister Cui Dalin said Sunday that it was during this transfer that a "misunderstanding appeared" about her age.

"Last year at the all-city competition, He Kexin moved from one team to another and during the process of registering during the move, there appeared this age discrepancy," Cui said during a news conference.

"So it was the appearance of a mistake in the process of transferring teams that the misunderstanding appeared. However, I can right here accurately say that the ages of the members of our gymnastics delegation entirely conform to the requirements for participation in the Beijing Olympic Games."

Read the Huffington Post's scoop on the "scandal of the ages"

Comments

[montypython]

07:06 PM on 08/25/2008

The State apparati will now be rewriting the life history of each of these girls from their first breath. Orwell's conjecture proven.

[DAE]

04:30 PM on 08/25/2008

NADIA WAS 14.

[gmlaster]

10:08 PM on 08/25/2008

Nadia came before the rules change.

[kappa08]

04:01 PM on 08/25/2008

Judged "sports" are worthless. It's an exhibition not unlike a beauty contest or X-game event. Not too many dudes follow that stuff. We like known values like a FINISH LINE or SCORE.

[GV97]

02:17 PM on 08/25/2008

The whole world knows they cheated in this particular sport..... those tiny little feet on the balance beam
and their little bodies flying through the air with the greatest of ease, and the poor little girl who did the beautiful singing but couldn't be shown because she wasn't pretty enough....­.good that the world sees
this !
For overall presentati­on the Chinese did a masterful job with their mountains of money (ours) and
their huge supply of manpower that we can never duplicate.
My hat is off to THOSE people who were probably worked to death to show such precision in the opening and closing ceremonies­.
Bravo !!!!!

[CL696]

02:12 PM on 08/25/2008

China is an 800 pound Economic Gorilla. It's their ball, it's their game and they can do what ever they want. Life is not fair and there is nothing any of us can do about it. If we all rose up and never bought another produce made in China (besides our economy collapsing­) our Government would force us to use their products because they hold the note on our debt...we have no financial freedom.

[coco77]

11:12 PM on 08/26/2008

Would our govt be satisfied with me boycotting Chinese goods but buying from Japan (who we also owe large gobs of money to)?

[sueno]

02:01 PM on 08/25/2008

Listen, athletes are athletes-
and we got beat by a 13 year old, lets let this one go....
We'll get them next time.

[MourningDude]

02:36 PM on 08/25/2008

This is more a criticism of the sport than anything. When a 16 year old is "over the hill", there's something seriously wrong with the sport as a whole.

Any sport that destroys your body so much that being younger is a distinct advantage should be banned from the Olympics for humanitari­an reasons.

[kappa08]

03:58 PM on 08/25/2008

It's a HUGE advantage for a 65lb kid that has not developed in the chest and rear. They land like a feather and the junk 's inertia doesn't throw you off balance. Sorry there is a legitimate beef on this one.

[FZliveson]

01:52 PM on 08/25/2008

Unless some brave souls push for truth, this argument is purely academic. If children suffer injury to their bodies as a result of pursuing gold medals for their nation, they are no less heroic than those killed in wars to glorify national dogma. Pain is pain. Loss is loss. Used to be that rules were made to be followed. It has changed to the fact that rules are made to keep the un-resourc­eful in line and allow the creative ones with great lawyers to "win."

Nationalis­m in the Olympics is worth about as much as colored frames on the dark glasses of the sightless.

Bravo for all of the achievemen­ts, preparatio­n and lessons learned.

[Soothsayer08]

01:48 PM on 08/25/2008

Sure it was !

[MourningDude]

11:48 AM on 08/25/2008

The documents that were found listed the ages for hundreds of athletes. I wonder of those hundreds, how many birth dates were recorded incorrectl­y.

My guess is that every other athlete's birthdate would be correct, and only those members on the gold medal squad that were underage would come up as 'clerical errors'.

[Sseb]

10:44 AM on 08/25/2008

If only China could channel their bad paperwork through the White House email system. Then it would disappear entirely, and most Americans wouldn't care.

[coco77]

11:08 PM on 08/26/2008

Then they shouldn't have posted the bad paperwork on the internet first.

[LeftLeaner]

10:25 AM on 08/25/2008

Now with the Olympics over, COMMUNIST China's cheating will fade into the background never to be heard from again.

After all, the IOC has NEVER been handled controvers­ial issues with any courage.

[FZliveson]

04:46 PM on 08/25/2008

LeftLeaner­...are you aware that "left" is usually toward socialism and that
Socialism is what Communism is a form of and that there is no strict form
of Communism? What do you know about your all caps; "COMMUNISM­?"
Just curious...­Your energy is as confusing as your message

[Felicty]

09:23 AM on 08/25/2008

They LIED to steal all those medals.

When will we take them away?

[bigironal25]

11:17 AM on 08/25/2008

Even it was proved beyond a shadow of doubt that some medalists were under age the IOC doesn't have the balls to do the right thing! I haven't watched the Olympics in over 20 years and I never will watch them ever again!

[Pupster]

12:34 PM on 08/25/2008

"We"? Is the US in charge of who gets medals now?

Feel free to fabricate 'intellige­nce' as a pretext for invading. Then take the medals away by force.

[Gardawg]

08:32 AM on 08/25/2008

Marion Jones ... didn't they take away her medals

Now which nation did she represent?

[just1morhw]

09:47 AM on 08/25/2008

That will never happen this time, it's not the US involved.

The same with the Spanish basketball teams. If that had been a US team doing the same thing they would have been punished somehow or even possibly would not have been allowed to compete.

[picodegallo54]

08:17 AM on 08/25/2008

if these pixies are 16, someone give them a Big Mac! looks like they could use the extra hormones.

[Paganus]

07:44 AM on 08/25/2008

This is not a court of law, and even if it were, the proof would not need to be absolute, only beyond a reasonable doubt. There are multiple sources, documents, etc. that establish this practice for the Chinese Olympic teams, and the official explanatio­n is "paperwork mistake?" It might be possible, but not probable. Hence we reasonably judge on the basis of the evidence that we have in hand, which leads the vast majority of critically thinking individual­s to believe that the Chinese team cheated.

But don't worry, I'm sure the IOC won't take your country's golds away - that would take principles­, principles they abandoned when when they awarded the games to a fascist military junta.

Media: Yeah, but boy howdee, weren't dose opnin' and closin' cer'monies purdee?

Yes, yes, they would have made Leni Riefenstah­l proud.

[Pupster]

12:36 PM on 08/25/2008

"Fascist military junta"? Do you know what that means, or did that just sound good to you? You can call China a lot of things, but they aren't that, if you know the meanings of those words.

[Paganus]

09:39 AM on 08/26/2008

Webster's New World Dictionary (1980) defines fascism thus:

"a system of government characteri­zed by rigid one-party dictatorsh­ip, forcible suppressio­n of opposition­, private economic enterprise under centralize­d government­al control, belligeren­t nationalis­m, racism, and militarism­, etc."

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

[DelvinMcGee]

02:12 PM on 08/25/2008

not exactly. this would most certainly be a civil, not criminal, case where the standard is "preponder­ance of the evidence", a much looser threshold than "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is the standard for criminal prosecutio­n.

[Paganus]

09:41 AM on 08/26/2008

Which would make it even easier to conclude, in this instance that the Chinese cheated.