Last night I watched the final rounds of the women’s team all-around competition. The US and China teams were quite close with only 2 rotations left. The Chinese team had a gymnast fall off the balance beam which was an automatic 0.8 deduction. This crucial error left the door open for the US to jump into 1st place. Unfortunately the US was unable to capitalize on the error as Alicia Sacramone also fell off the beam. Going into the last rotation, floor exercise, Sacramone fell again on a tumbling run, which was another huge deduction. The following two gymnasts Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson both stepped out of bounds, resulting in 0.1 point deductions. The Chinese team came into floor exercise next and executed relatively error-free and won the gold.
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Alicia Sacramone, 20 (left) is visibly shaken after making an error.This morning I read an article talking about the results of this competition and I notice on the messageboard portion of ESPN there was considerable debate on the subject of age. Apparently, some of the gymnasts on China’s female team may have been under the minimum age of 16. I’m not sure exactly why there is a minimum age, but there is and it’s 16.
What evidence exists that some of these Chinese gymnasts are ineligible to compete? Well, first off they look young. In comparison to their American counterparts, the Chinese gymnasts are considerably shorter, lighter, and less curvy. They also have more youthful looking faces as judged by most people. One gymnast supposedly was missing a tooth (presumed to be a missing baby tooth).
Although it’s quite easy to, we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. No one can accurately discern someone’s age just by their appearance. On the issues of height, weight and body shape, I believe on average, American women are taller and heavier than Chinese women, so I don’t believe it’s a good assumption to say a Chinese woman is younger simply because she’s smaller than an American woman. The missing tooth could be a baby tooth…or it could be a adult tooth that was knocked out. You can’t tell what kind of tooth it was simply by looking at the gap in her smile.
Shawn Johnson of the US (left) is 4'9" and 16 years old.
He Kexin of China is 4'8" and 16, but was reported to be 13 as recently as 9 months ago.
Shawn Johnson again - close up.
The 3 girls circled are the ones who are suspected of being under 16. I believe He Kexin is the one on the left.
Looking at the 4 pictures above I, for one, can't conclusively say one looks older than the other. Even looking at the close-ups all I can say is that Shawn Johnson looks Caucasian and He Kexin looks Chinese.
Anecdotally, I have a friend who is quite petite – she’s 4’11 and can’t weigh more than 80 pounds. She has a very youthful looking face and she can fit into clothes made for kids – she just turned 30 recently. Another time I was talking with a friend of a friend who I had met for the 2nd time. He was telling me about his siblings one of which was 12 years younger than him and was in college – I did a quick mental calculation assuming he was my age and it didn’t add up – he was actually in his 30s. Whoops.
Now the more compelling evidence is that there have been
government news agency reports that list members of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team being as young as 13. These reports were published less than 1 year before the Olympics, so if they were accurate the oldest these members could be now would be 14.
The problem with this evidence is that it can be easily denied. The Chinese government can simply say the previous new agency report was incorrect and that the gymnasts are actually 16. Age is verified using government-issued passports as well, so the veracity of those is questionable as well.
Many people simply don’t believe that the passports are accurate. The problem is that all this speculation over whether or not the government is being deceptive can’t be pushed aside unless there is some neutral 3rd party that can find an independent method to verifying the gymnasts’ age.
Should the US be leading this effort? Absolutely not. It should be led by the IOC or some committee that doesn’t have an obvious national interest. If an American led probe determined the Chinese gymnasts were underage the results might be dismissed as biased by a sore loser. In order for the results to remain credible a neutral party must be used.
We certainly don’t want to start a witch hunt where full scale probes must be launched every time a gymnast who looks like she’s 15 steps out on the floor, but in the case of blatant inconsistencies in the reporting of ages, investigations should be conducted.
If a 3rd party investigation conclusively establishes that China used ineligible athletes, their medals should be stripped and awarded to the US. There should also be some neutral 3rd party form of age identification to prevent future violations of the rule.
Lastly, I have to say that unless age restrictions are in place to protect developing athletes from physical harm, they should not be used. For example, I’ve heard of youth baseball leagues prohibiting pitchers from using certain pitches as they may cause permanent arm/shoulder damage in youngsters. But if the age restriction is not there to prevent damage to the athletes’ bodies then it should be lifted as to allow the best athletes to compete.
If you’re 15 years old and you’re the best gymnast in the world, you should be competing at the Olympics instead of sitting at home watching them on TV. After all, the summer games are only every 4 years and by the time you’re 19 you’re a relative geezer in the gymnastics world. I don’t want to go flying off on a tangent about affirmative action but the message is simple – may the best man or woman win.
To wrap it up:1. A 3rd party, neutral committee should investigate any age violations.
2. If China is found guilty of using ineligible athletes, the medals should be stripped.
3. Age restrictions that aren’t in place solely to prevent physical harm to athletes should be removed.
4. People should stop jumping to conclusions about peoples’ ages until more definitive evidence is provided.
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