underage chinese gymnasts: sour grapes or legit beef?

[cheapie]

just read this article and thought it had some interesting points.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...ml?eref=sircrc

what do you think? while i don't think american athletes are more above cheating than chinese athletes, i do think there's more of an institutional acceptance of it on the chinese side. i think if there were stories about american gymnasts being under the age limit, you'd have all sorts of people in the states digging into it.

and the IOC is such a weak-kneed organization. i find their pathetic explanation of the situation, the retarded comments about the air quality, etc. just pathetic.

i do have one bone to pick with the author. he calls out the International Cycling Federation (that's not even the name of the group. it's the International Cycling Union)for not policing it's members. the organization has been very proactive in chasing dopers. if he can't even get the name right, how can i be expected to think he knows what he's talking about?

[Prngr44]

if you're going to have an age restriction in a sport, you'd better have the stomach to enforce it.

I completely agree with this. There were discussions about the ages even before any medals were handed out.

[Jeffbx]

12 maybe, certainly not 16.

But is there an advantage to using underage kids? I assume the rule is in place to protect the kids from being exploited (which has most likely happened with these kids), not because of any advantage they might have. Am I wrong?

[cheapie]

the rule is in place to prevent young kids from going through too much stress. and to prevent exploitation.

but there supposedly is an advantage in the area of flexibility. i'm guessing it's more of an issue with the female gymnasts than their male counterparts.

[sho.gun]

I just came across this: http://strydehax.blogspot.com/ , basically showing proof that one of the gymnasts is 14.

[VTGreg]

the rule is in place to prevent young kids from going through too much stress. and to prevent exploitation.

but there supposedly is an advantage in the area of flexibility. i'm guessing it's more of an issue with the female gymnasts than their male counterparts.

There are also advantages being lighter and having a lower center of gravity (i.e. shorter) when competing on some of the apparatus, balance beam being one of them.

If you're going to have rules then enforce them. I agree with the sentiment that the IOC would have been all over this if it were the Americans.

There have also been a number of questionable results in the judged sports where Chinese athletes have received suspect scores and won medals as a result. Trampoline and the women's vault are two examples where the results were questioned.

[zippyjuan]

There have been questions about athletes for a long time. In the past, the focus was on the Eastern Bloc countries- the USSR and East Germany in particular. Like the Chineese, they put a heavy emphasis on winning lots of medals to bring glory to their countries and their forms of government and they invested lots of money and research into what they could do to make their athletes better and did everything they could including selecting them at young ages, pushing them extremely hard and use of things like steroids. At one Olympics, US distance runner Mary Decker Slaney said she walked into the women's locker room and thought she was in the men's when she saw members of the East German swim team.

Western athletes have cheated too, but not on the government sponsored and encouraged systemic level. That is a huge difference.

There also used to be big complaints about the differences between what was considered an amateur (allowed) athlete vs a professional one. Jim Thorpe was asked to return gold medals becasue he played a season of semi-pro baseball- an activity not related to his achievements on the track. Russians used athletes which would probably have been considered pros in other countries while they said they were Army employees. The amateur restriction is gone (and I think in some sports like basketball and tennis it was not a good idea) and the age restriction will probably go away too.

One concern about using younger and younger athletes is the toll that the training can have on their still developing bodies. In gymnastics the tiny size and flexibility of pre-pubescent kids is an advantage- a gymnast is over the hill by 21.

[lindysd]

...There have also been a number of questionable results in the judged sports where Chinese athletes have received suspect scores and won medals as a result. Trampoline and the women's vault are two examples where the results were questioned.[/QUOTE]


I agree with the questionable results.... what bugs me is that judges for the country being scored do not submit scores for that performance. i.e - a Chinese judge will not score a Chinese diver. Everything is censored in China, everything is controlled by the govt.... any chance the Chinese govt is censoring the scores and replacing them with their own?

[Thesifer]

...There have also been a number of questionable results in the judged sports where Chinese athletes have received suspect scores and won medals as a result. Trampoline and the women's vault are two examples where the results were questioned.


I agree with the questionable results.... what bugs me is that judges for the country being scored do not submit scores for that performance. i.e - a Chinese judge will not score a Chinese diver. Everything is censored in China, everything is controlled by the govt.... any chance the Chinese govt is censoring the scores and replacing them with their own?

No.

[gear02]

...There have also been a number of questionable results in the judged sports where Chinese athletes have received suspect scores and won medals as a result. Trampoline and the women's vault are two examples where the results were questioned.

wow...botched post (stupid server)...oh well I'll update it later...

[cheapie]

agreed. no way.

[Daedalus]

The advantage to being an underage female gymnast has more to do with body mass than anything else...how much weight and, more importantly, where it is. Olympic gymnasts hit puberty at a later age so the Chinese "women" may not have gone through it yet. Lower moment of inertia for the engineers. At least that's how the missus explained it to me, and she was in the sport for 9 years.

I don't believe the Chinese government is influencing the scoring. But there is no question in my mind that some of the medals have been misplaced. Liukin should have 1 more gold and Sacramone should have gotten a bronze. Most blatant IMO was how they were scored in the all-around.

[Jeffbx]

...any chance the Chinese govt is censoring the scores and replacing them with their own?

No. Any chance some foreign judges are being paid or otherwise influenced by China? Oh yeah.

I also think there's a lot of anti-US sentiment out there these days which does not help.

[Prngr44]

It's about time...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/spo...cle4583174.ece

[renovation]

cheating cheating and i feel if its found out to be true .the whole team for that event should be penalized for the next Olympic. by given lower starting points or unable to compete in the next world meet!

[Jeffbx]

I feel bad for those girls... all the work they put in, and they're at risk of losing their gold medals because some bureaucrats wanted to improve China's image.

IMHO, they're not the ones who should be punished.

[Prngr44]

If it's anything like track (when the entire women's relay team was stripped of their golds for Marion Jones' cheating) they'll likely lose the all-around gold which is the sport's most prestigious medal.

[ray]

not enough evidence to support the claims. though the IOC is investigating, they have already admitted there is a lack of evidence. the passports that were presented to them all show the gymnasts as 16 years old, so from the IOC's standpoint everything is fine.

[cheapie]

can't trust the chinese! 'specially ones with pirate avatars.

[nate el bueno]

Well, in response to the above, I saw that people mentioned the reason for using younger gymnasts being the low center of gravity and flexibility, but another main reason is the lack of fear, which I didn't see anyone mention. Someone who is 14 is more likely to "just do it" than someone in their late teens. I recall when I was a kid, I would do all kinds of flips and nonsense into the pool, and now I get nervous about plain old diving. It's not that I think I'm going to hurt myself-it just doesn't come natural anymore.

[eSDee]

Seems like sour grapes. Take the medal you won and then let the IOC figure it out later. Be proud of your silver/bronze.

[lindysd]

No. Any chance some foreign judges are being paid or otherwise influenced by China? Oh yeah.

I also think there's a lot of anti-US sentiment out there these days which does not help.

ok ... so the sarcasm in my last post did not come out....
but this is where i was going!