Age scandal rocks China Athletics
Chinese athletics officials are taking strict measures to ensure a repeat of an underage scandal does not happen. Dong Fangxiao, a Chinese gymnast won bronze medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, but after six months it was taken back from her, as she falsely recorded her age.
After this incident, Chinese officials are paying close attention to this issue. This year, China has prepared a 70 athlete-squad for the first youth Olympics that will be held from 14 to 26 August.
The head of China’s delegation to Singapore and the Vice President of State General Administration of Sport, Cai Zhenhua said that China will not tolerate age falsifications and in order to avoid recurrence of such issue, the administration has employed various strict means that can verify the participant’s ages.
He said, "We've scrutinized every athlete's age in the delegation for the Youth Olympic Games to make sure there is no one going to Singapore for youth Olympic Games with a fake age".
The athletes participating in the event are between the ages of 14 and 18.
Cai Zhenhua further said that his administration has worked very hard and they have ensured that the Chinese delegation is clean and transparent. Moreover, this will ultimately benefit the Olympics fair play spirit.
Cai Zhenhua informed the Chinese authorities about checked participant’s birth certificates, ID cards, passports, domestic athlete registration cards and domestic and international authentication for competitions, in order to confirm athletes’ date of birth.
Beside this, the administration confirmed age by making the athletes under-16 to undergo bone age checks through nuclear magnetic resonance.
All these strict measures in China came because of the age issue that has aggravated great controversy over the recent years.
The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) cancelled gymnast Dong's, Sydney results in February, because Dong’s birth date registered at the Olympics was 23rd January 1986 that made her age 14 in Sydney which was below the age limit of 16. But her birth date in International Gymnastic Federation database is 20th January 1983.
Another controversy arose when Yi Jianlian, power forward of the New Jersey Nets in the NBA, recorded his birth date as Oct 27, 1987. However, it was proved fake when the local media in 2008, went to his hometown and proved from his registration form in junior high school that Jianlian was born in 1984.
The age of Chen Ruolin was also questioned. Chen Ruolin, at 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, won gold medal in the women's 10m platform and 10m synchronized platform diving events. According to the Chinese national diving registration list in 2003, Chen Ruolin’s birth date is 26th April 1994, but in 2007, Chen’s birth date was changed to 12th December 1992.
For diving competitions, it is required that the participant must turn 14 during the year they compete in any official World Cup, World Championships or Olympics. So if Chen was born in 1994, she would have been participating illegally at the 2007 World Championships, where she won a gold and a silver.
The Chinese delegation will compete in 19 of the 23 sports. Besides the official sporting event, many other cultural and other sports will held for the teenage participants during the inaugural Youth Olympics.
China's sports icon Feng Kun, the captain and setter of the gold-winning women's volleyball team at the Athens Olympic Games, Yang Yang, China's first Winter Olympics gold medal winner, and Guo Jingjing, four-time Olympic gold-medal winning diver will share their experiences with the participants in Singapore.
The event will feature more than 370,000 viewers, nearly about 5,000 athletes and officials from the 205 National Olympic Committees, with approximately 1,200 media representatives, 20,000 local and international volunteers.
The Games are organized after every four years. The second Youth Olympic Games in 2014 will be hosted by Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province.
Tags: