Patterico's Pontifications

8/14/2008

Those Youthful Chinese Gymnasts

Filed under: Sports — DRJ @ 1:14 pm

[Guest post by DRJ]

Gateway Pundit has a wealth of material on those youthful Chinese gymnasts and China’s efforts to scrub the internet of all references to their ages.

– DRJ

12 Comments

  1. This is absurd. I understand rooting hard for your team, but China is just cheating. It’s a disgrace, and all Chinese gold medalists, including those (if any) who aren’t cheating, are tarnished badly by this.

    The media that isn’t in the tank should just tabulate the medal count as though all Chinese participants didn’t exist.

    NBC, the Olympics Committee, and their pals are basically stealing gold medals from those who played by the rules.

    Comment by Juan — 8/14/2008 @ 2:07 pm

  2. I’m torn on this. On the one hand, it does look like cheating, and seemingly should be met with the same strict consequences as improper drug use.

    On the other hand, those gymnasts were phenomenal, and their performances were worthy of the acclaim they received.

    I think the real problem is with the rule. Why can’t 13, 14, or 15-year-olds compete?

    VG

    Comment by Voiceguy in L.A. — 8/14/2008 @ 2:43 pm

  3. They are cheating. Period. Sensational or not, they are cheating. I am glad that finally someone is shining a light on this.

    Comment by JD — 8/14/2008 @ 2:55 pm

  4. Voiceguy, it’s not that it looks liek cehating. IT IS CHEATING. There are rules, and they broke them.

    As to why the rules are in place… well, why are football fields 100 yards long? Sometimes you just have to have a rule or there is no sense. But here, there’s a great reason: kids weigh a lot less. You can change rules if you like, but they broke the rules in place, and it’s unfair to retroactively change them.

    Understand this: younger gymnasts have an enormous advantage, and their performances are much less impressive than an adult’s. There is no comparison between the awesome performance of the silver medalists and the performance of those who have 30% less weight to swing around.

    The much younger simply aren’t as good, period.

    Their performances are not worth the level of acclaim of an olympic gold medal. The media will pretend otherwise… even lionize the kids as though they somehow ‘overcame’ the obstacle of being tiny kids, but it’s crap. This was institutional cheating, the committee knows it, and every associate of the activity should simply be banned from respectable athletic competition, including those on the olympic committee.

    It’s time for a new olympic committee that isn’t totally corrupt. Instead of the bribery system, just come up with a reasonable system for randomly selecting 1 million+ population cities (that register) and follow basic human rights.

    Etc etc

    Comment by Juan — 8/14/2008 @ 3:01 pm

  5. I make so many typos on this stupid PDA. Sorry about that.

    Comment by Juan — 8/14/2008 @ 3:02 pm

  6. Off topic, but:
    Why is there only one medal for basketball and dozens for swimming? The way some sports are subdivided is ridiculousness.
    It is like having a separate medal for regular basketball, one-on-one basketball, three-on-three basketball, half-court basketball, 30 & 60 minutes basketball games, foul shooting, three-point shooting, etc.

    Comment by Perfect Sense — 8/14/2008 @ 3:21 pm

  7. It has to be racism Perfect Sense. No other explanation.

    Comment by daleyrocks — 8/14/2008 @ 4:42 pm

  8. Walsh/May are just fun to watch.

    Comment by JD — 8/14/2008 @ 6:31 pm

  9. Well, the actual singer during the opening ceremonies was 2 years younger than advertised, so maybe it’s simply consistent that the gymnast He is two years younger than advertised.

    Comment by jim2 — 8/14/2008 @ 6:56 pm

  10. Perfect sense, I guess I see your point. Though you have to keep in mind that many of these swimmers are only trying for one event, so it’s kinda like a Basketball player also running track.

    Comment by Juan — 8/14/2008 @ 10:18 pm

  11. I don’t know if it is relevant or not, but I have a Chinese friend who tells me that the Chinese count their ages different than most others, they start out at 1 years old when they are born.

    Comment by Thomas — 8/15/2008 @ 9:32 am

  12. Thomas – I thought that they measured their ages in dog years.

    Comment by JD — 8/15/2008 @ 9:49 am

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