For gymnastics, you have to be at least 16 the year that the Olympics take place. There have been old newspaper articles that state the true ages of some of the female gymnasts. China claims it to be "an error in the bureaucracy." You don't have errors in bureaucracy in a totalitarian society, sorry.
It's not just one girl, it's multiple female gymnasts on the Chinese team. They tried to bump up their age by changing it on their passports, and throwing tons of make up on them, but it hasn't fooled anyone so far.
Yea, also, they put on the openings a different child that was singing the atem because the real voice girl was hideous and the non-singer was beautiful and cute.
Nestel you obviously haven't been looking at the medal tallies. Though I'm hardly concerned about this.
RANT TIME
China had an opportunity to be exemplars. This doesn't just mean in competition, but also as exemplars to upholding the policy- the integrity central to the spirit of the Olympic games.
What I've seen overall is the difference in the Chinese ethos and the rest of the world: China's 'greatness through imitation' goes skin-deep; a country whose backbone is all about looking good regardless of whether this means actually being good or faking it (I'm well familiar with this thanks to my background). But more concerningly China's overeagerness with the medals conveys a grave misunderstanding of the purpose of the Olympics: it signals to the rest of the world that their mentality as a country is that they can do whatever they want while purporting to hold other countries to the standards agreed upon. And that's not going to bring anybody closer together though while we're here, we're supposed to not say anything about it because that in itself would look sourgrapes and be against the spirit of the Olympics.
That's just not cool. As I said before, if I were to personify China's government, I would say that they (not just them but in this particular case) have a lot of growing up to do because this really does strikes me as a kid who spams for the sake of getting AP points.
I wouldn't be surprised if several under-the-table deals and 'off the record' things specific to these Olympics were done, and I've said this before, but that does disappoint me as I believe that a lot of hard work went into Beijing '08 and that the people of China genuinely want to put their best foot forward and in many cases, actually have.
