They are talking about China's He Kexin - she won the bars final, over Nastia Liukin with the same score (it went through the tie-breaking system). They are actually talking about taking away her medals if she's underage - I thought the nation gets punished for not following the rules with a penalty of not being able to participate in the next Games, not the inidividual gymnasts getting their medals stripped when they have not done any doping, etc. that are directly related to them - like in the "
Kim Gwang Suk - 1992 Olympics age controversy".
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An IOC official told The Times that because of "discrepancies" that have come to light about the age of He Kexin, the host nation's darling who won gold in both team and individual events, an official inquiry has been launched that could result in the gymnast being stripped of her medals.
The investigation was triggered as a US computer expert claimed today to have uncovered Chinese government documents that he says prove she is only 14 - making her ineligible to compete in the Olympics - rather than 16, as officials in Beijing insist is her age.
Mike Walker, a computer security expert, told The Times how he tracked down two documents that he says had been removed from a Chinese government website. The documents, he said, stated that He's birth date was January 1 1994 - making her 14 - and not January 1 1992, which is printed in her passport.
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Bela Karolyi has repeatedly accused half of the team as being underaged, He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan, and Yang Yilin
[quote]"They are obviously kids," Mr Karolyi said. "Twelve, 14 max - and they're telling the world they are 16? What arrogance." Although the US team has deliberately steered clear of the controversy, his wife suggested after the US team's loss to China that the Chinese gymnasts were still losing their baby teeth. "One of the girls has a missing tooth," she said.[/quote]
One of Bela's star gymnasts Mary Lou Retton:
[quote]Mary Lou Retton, the US Olympic gymnastics gold-medallist in the 1984 Games, told the New York Times last month: "The girls are so little, so young. They say they are 16, but I don't know." The IOC has been accused of deliberately ignoring the issue because it feared offending China.[/quote]
The process, and the answer in the internet cache:
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Yet Giselle Davies, an IOC spokesperson, said tonight that because of troubling new developments, the committee had instructed the International Gymnastics Federation, the sport's governing body, to investigate.
"More information has come to light that did point to discrepancies," Ms Davies said. "We have asked the gymnastics federation to look into it further with the national Chinese federation. If there is a question mark, and we have a concern - which we do - we ask the governing body of any sport to look into...as to why there is a discrepancy."
The man who uncovered the allegations about the underage athlete told The Times that he was not even a sports a fan, but decided to investigate the issue to determine if Chinese authorities were lying. He eventually discovered that two Excel spreadsheets on the Chinese government's official sports website -
www.sport.gov.cn - that mentioned her name had recently being removed.
"There was a conclusion here," Mr Walker said. "These documents existed, on a state-wide website, and now they don't exist, and this change has taken place recently. I was interested because these were documents that no-one could find. If there's information to be found on the internet I'm a citizen journalist - it was a challenge."
He turned to a Chinese search engine, Baidu. In its cache he found both documents. "The listing in there, quite clearly, is He Kexin's birth date, January 1, 1994," Mr Walker said.
That makes her 14 years and 220 days old and too young to compete. The lists were compiled by the General Administration of Sport of China.
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[COLOR=black]Under his blog name Stryde Hax, Mr Walker wrote: "Much of the coverage regarding Kexin's age has only mentioned 'allegations' of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state...rise to a level of evidence higher than 'allegation'. How official are these documents? Pretty dang official - they were issued by the General Administration of Sport of China."[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]He insists that she is old enough to compete. Asked by journalists about the debate, she said: "My real age is 16. I don't care what other people say. I want other people to know that 16 is my real age."[/COLOR]
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Could be more controversy than at the 2004 Olympics.
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How aggressive and sustained the IOC-ordered investigation will be remains to be seen. If it did ultimately result in the stripping of gold medals from one of China's favorite athletes, it would be an Olympic scandal with reverberations far beyond the sport itself.
In July the New York Times published references to articles in the Beijing press in which He was referred to as only 14 years old.
Chinese officials responded immediately by providing the newspaper with a passport copy indicating He had been born on January 1, 1992, but still doubts lingered, not least because the athlete looks barely past puberty.
When asked about her recently - and before He's gold medal wins - IOC president Jacques Rogge claimed it was not his organization's role to check the age of competitors. "The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes," he said.
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Related:
FIG president gives gymnastics judges high marks (Boston Herald) -
http://www.gymchat.com/messageboards/showthread.php?t=76554
[quote]"In principle, yes. I must repeat, we will never be perfect," Bruno Grandi, president of the International Gymnastics Federation, said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press. "But many things have been done much, much better."[/quote]
Also:
[COLOR=#810081]Times of London Story[/COLOR]