SI article about China's "womens" gymnastics team

[mongoose33]

I'm a little less....surprised, I suppose, by this.

The last couple of years, I've hosted visiting Chinese faculty who are here for a month on a cultural immersion experience. Naturally, I have their passport info, age info, etc. as part of the process.

You'd be surprised at how old some of these women are, given how they look. One looked like a college student, perhaps 21 or so. She was 32. Another looked like maybe 25 or 27; she was 40. Another, you'd have sworn she was maybe 24; 35 was her age.

Now, I'm not sure exactly how that equates to very small, very young-looking Chinese gymnasts, but many, many Chinese look younger than they are. I don't know if it's genetics, later maturation, diet, environment, whatever, but I wish I had their apparent ages. Maybe it's just not having spent one's life eating junk food, drinking soda, sucking down coffee.

Another way to look at this (and one more reason why I'm less inclined to pass judgment) is that, in a country w/ China's population size, and their focus on winning medals, it's not inconceivable that they would have had a few hundred thousand young gymnasts all working their way up through the system.

If you think of it in terms of natural selection, out of a huge population like that, who *would* rise to the top in women's gymnastics? The youngest in body and smallest in size, right? We may just be seeing the far left tail of a very large normal distribution, girls who are simply maturing physically late, and thus have the physiques of girls 5 years younger.

I remember, in high school, students who just looked really young. They weren't, they just looked that way. We may be seeing the same thing on the Chinese gymnastics team.

[ForTehNguyen]

asians look young for their age, nothing new

[Captain Jack]

I only caught a glimpse of the womens gymnastics event, but I see what people are saying here. True, some asian girls/women can look young, but jeez, they look borderline young, if not under the age.

I also noticed that despite the American Men's gymnastic team doing extremely well (not counting the horse and floor events), they scored quite a bit lower than the Chinese team. Not by a little, but by a lot. While the Chinese were performing very well, all their routines were very conservative. Even the annoying hosts were saying this as well. They also said that the American team, along with some others were doing more difficult, more flamboyant routines, and doing them WELL, were getting far lower scores than the Chinses team. Something stinks in China, and it's not their air...

[jmichna]

Mongoose33 and ForTehNguyen,
I fully appreciate your observations, and understand the reasoning behind "selection for performance" coupled with the available wide (natural) "variation in the population." I too have observed that many (most?) Asian women seem unusually youthful and ageless, and it is very easy to under-estimate their ages, especially for the mature woman, but have either of you looked closely at the Chinese gymnasts? They appear genuinely prepubescent in body structure and musculature... not sylph-like or waif-like, but actually prepubescent.

[billbrasky]

Originally Posted by Captain Jack

I only caught a glimpse of the womens gymnastics event, but I see what people are saying here. True, some asian girls/women can look young, but jeez, they look borderline young, if not under the age.

I also noticed that despite the American Men's gymnastic team doing extremely well (not counting the horse and floor events), they scored quite a bit lower than the Chinese team. Not by a little, but by a lot. While the Chinese were performing very well, all their routines were very conservative. Even the annoying hosts were saying this as well. They also said that the American team, along with some others were doing more difficult, more flamboyant routines, and doing them WELL, were getting far lower scores than the Chinses team. Something stinks in China, and it's not their air...

host country always gets the benefit. I am no fan of the chinese government, but in the opening ceremonies they said in '04 the greeks won a whole mess of golds. Maybe 24? maybe it was 24 medals total, what ever the number it dwarfed recent decades of greek competitive olympic athletics. They are no powerhouse, but they hosted and surprise surprise they did 3-4 times better than any time in the last 100 years.

those gymnasts do look small, do you guys remember the beefcake chinese swimmers at i think the 2000 summer gams? Lol they were all built like serena williams, they had more muscle than your average 18 year old senior male football player in highschool.

as said they do have 500 million females, they are very paternal and domineering, i think they do stuff like the east germans used to where they send scouts out to preschools and kindergardens, run kids through all sorts of routines, not just gymnastics, but whole mess of popular sports. The take note of the top fraction of 1 percent performers, they ask parents to take kids away and send them to sports camps. Not fun camp but like a drill camp, you play ping pong all day, table tennis.

Does anyone know of Yao mings parents, some article said because of his parents lineage, he was monitored from birth. Always expected great things from the guy.

i think those girls do look young. I had a korean gf in college she was about 5'0 95 lbs, but she did have some boobs (big b cups babby c cups good for a skinny korean girl), not your average pancake butt, and decent hips. She grew up in america, but was adopted by whites. I can only imagine how small she would have been if she was raised in rural china in some viallage with terrible nutrition no vitamins etc. She didnt look particularly young in the face, had the good smooth korean skin like porcelin, but those 2008 gymnastics look like 5th graders to me.

[MordeKyle]

before i even heard about any of this, i was watching them last night and wondering what the minimum age was for athletes because those girls looked fresh out of diapers.

[Ride the Lightning]

The minimum age is depend on what event it is. For gymnasts it's 16.

[jmichna]

NYT Article

Excerpt:
...Half the team — He Kexin, Yang Yilin, Jiang Yuyuan — would be under age, according to online sports registration lists in China. The international gymnastics federation, however, said those gymnasts were eligible and that the ages on their passports were correct.

Yang, who turns 16 at the end of the month, said, “It’s unreasonable for people to think I’m too young.”

Because China and the United States competed on the same events each rotation, it was easy to notice differences in their body types. The Chinese gymnasts lack curves, have an average height of 4 feet 9 inches and weigh an average of 77 pounds. Deng is the smallest, at 4-6 and 68 pounds. The women on the United States team, generally more muscular and shapely than the Chinese, are an average of 3 ½ inches taller and 30 pounds heavier....

NPR Radio Interview: Age Of China's Gold-Medal Gymnasts Questioned

From Hot Air:

Ultimate ChiCom chicanery: Gold-medal gymnasts are underage? Update: More cheating?
posted at 11:55 am on August 13, 2008 by Allahpundit

There’s really no doubt about it and no one’s much pretending that there is. If the photos don’t convince you, read the NYT or LAT or listen to NPR and you’ll find them all citing the fact that records available online show some of the girls to be no older than 14, two years younger than the cut-off for the competition. And frankly, even that seems a stretch. From the Times:

“One of the girls has a missing tooth,” [U.S. coordinator Martha] Karolyi said, suggesting that the gymnast was so young that she lost a baby tooth and had yet to have a permanent one emerge…

Half of the team — He Kexin, Yang Yilin, Jiang Yuyuan — would be under age, according to online sports registration lists in China. The international gymnastics federation, however, said those gymnasts were eligible and that the ages on their passports were correct…

Because China and the United States competed on the same events each rotation, it was easier to notice differences in their body types. The Chinese gymnasts lack curves, have an average height of 4 feet 9 inches and weigh an average of 77 pounds. Deng is the smallest, at 4-6 and 68 pounds. The women on the United States team, generally more muscular and shapely than the Chinese, are an average of 3 ½ inches taller and 30 pounds heavier.

The event in which the Chinese blew the U.S. team away? The uneven bars — perfectly suited, per NPR’s reporter, for smaller, lighter girls. So egregious is this fraud, in fact, that even NBC’s not shying away from it. Watch the exchange below with Bela Karolyi, former U.S. coach and Martha’s husband, talking about how easy it would be for the Chinese to doctor the passports they’re citing as evidence of the girls’ age. The Olympics committee has washed its hands of the matter, declaring they accept the passports as legitimate lest they offend the host, so toss this alongside the 1972 basketball final as another example of a famously corrupt organization looking the other way at malfeasance to accommodate a politically palatable end.

Update: Some of the complaints about cheating are bound to be sour grapes, but drink this in.

[jmichna]

Gateway Pundit
Thursday, August 14, 2008

SPUN GOLD--- CHINA BUSTED Scrubbing Internet of Articles That Show Gymnasts Are Too Young To Compete! (Updated!)

Check out the updates below---
China Caught Scrubbing Internet-- Gymnasts Are Too Young!

Between 2003 and 2006 the General Administration of Sport of China reported that Chinese gymnast Yang Yilin was born on Aug. 26, 1993.
In 2007 the Chinese bumped her birth date back to Aug. 26, 1992:

There were already reports questioning the age of the Chinese gymnasts before the gymnastics team competition last night.

But, after the world got a better look at the teens with missing baby teeth there were several reports today on the controversy.
The New York Times reported on August 4, 2008:

With the start of the women's gymnastics competition less than one week away, questions are again being raised about the age of a Chinese gymnast scheduled to compete at the Beijing Games.

Yang Yilin, a top contender for gold in the all-around and the uneven bars, could be 14 instead of the minimum age of 16, The Associated Press reported Sunday.

She is the third of six Olympians on the Chinese women's gymnastics team whose age has been questioned in the lead-up to these Olympics.

Registration lists from 2003 to 2006, previously posted on the Web site of the General Administration of Sport of China, said Yang was born on Aug. 26, 1993, which means she will turn 15 later this month. Gymnasts must turn 16 during the year of the Olympics to be eligible to compete in the Games.

On the 2007 registration list, Yang's birthday changed to Aug. 26, 1992, suddenly making her old enough for the Olympics, The A.P. said.

Chinese gymnastics officials have not yet addressed the question of Yang's age. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a news conference Saturday that age eligibility was not an I.O.C. issue, and that the International Gymnastics Federation, known by the acronym F.I.G., is in charge of making sure gymnasts are old enough to compete.

The F.I.G.'s secretary general, André Gueisbuhler, told The A.P. that he would not comment about Yang's age because he had not seen the paperwork.

Four of the six gymnasts on the Chinese women’s Olympic team — Yang Yilin, He Kexin, Deng Linlin and Jiang Yuyuan — at an Olympic souvenir store at the athletes’ village Sunday in Beijing. (Photos by Juliet Macur/The New York Times)

There were reports last month that the Chinese had previously listed two of the gymnasts as ineligible to compete in the Beijing Games due to their age.
The Belfast Telegraph reported:

Two female Chinese gymnasts, including a gold-medal favourite, might be too young to participate in the Beijing Olympics. Several online records and reports show He Kexin, the host nation's top competitor on uneven bars, and Jiang Yuyuan might not yet be 16, the minimum age for Olympic eligibility for gymnastics. Both were chosen for China's team last week.

On the website of the Chengdu Sports Bureau – Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province in southwest China – a file dated January 2006 shows He as being born 1 January 1994. Most recently, a 23 May story in the China Daily newspaper, the official English language paper of the Chinese government, had He's age as 14. The newspaper story says: "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."

UPDATE: China is caught scrubbing the internet---
In an article from May 23, 2008 on gymnast He Kexin (Google cache):

In the original article on May 23rd of this year the China Daily reported:

"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."

But, since it was first published in May the article has been scrubbed:

The article at the China Daily now reads:

The 16-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.

China.org also has the article posted saying the gymnast was 14.

UPDATE 2: Another article on He Kexin at Xina Sports news service, via China Digital Times, had her age listed as 13 in November 2007.


Here is a translated view of that article on He Kexin from last November claiming she was 13 at the time:

This article was originally written in the official language of China so they cannot claim it was mistranslated.

The AP says the page is no longer available.

But, too bad for China the articles were saved in the internet archives.

[CrAz3D]

Way to go China, lie your way to an advantage