Chinese Women's Gymnasts?

Question

So there is a lot of controversy on how old they are. Do you think they are 16? IMO, I don't think they are. They look pre-teen at best!

Answer 1

Why the 16 year old rule in the first place? Maybe to stop China from winning coz many western countries train late at age. Haha. And knowing the Chinese, they can't be outsmarted. If they get tricked, they trick more.

Answer 2

I do not think they were! But i am sure they have to prove their ages!

Answer 3

lol who cares how old they are.. the fact that they may be 12 and can compete with the lvl of 16 year old Americans is just good enough.. and also what's with that midget girl on the Americans she looks like she's 8..

Answer 4

Wow, Circus.  Thanks for the focus back to the human reality.  I spent time in China during a Biology fellowship, studying various ecosystems, blah blah.  Yes, the women in China on the whole appear smaller than American women.  If you see the way they eat and are treated in poor and rural areas, it is understandable, but some of it is indeed genetic.  However, grown women in China do not, I repeat, do not, look like those gymnasts.  They have the faces of women, not little scared babies.  I saw how women lived in rural China.  I know that China is lying for national glory, and I don't care about medals.

I respect the talent of these girls, they are amazing and have suffered for their sport.  I mourn for their childhoods and their lack of real choices.  I guess instead of yammering on Yahoo answers though, I should be out their trying to change the world, huh?  

Answer 5

I also think they are very young,maybe 13 or 14. And they will be short the whole life. :(

Answer 6

i agree adapted.i dont much care for there age its the judging system im dissapointed in.unfair and biased.i may be biased also but ray charles could have voted better.heres a link of there age and why it matters

Answer 7

Today in Time Magazine-

"I gave my youth to sport, but in return, I was thrown out like garbage, with no knowledge, no skill, and a barren womb." - Zou Chunlan, Female Chinese Weightlifter, retired.

And, in 2005- by Qinqrong Ma, Chinese Womens' Rights Advocate:

"The only way to solve the problem of womens' subordination

is to change people's mindset and to plant the new idea of gender equality into every mind."     So, let's keep it up!  

No, I don't think they are all at least 16 years old.  By the way, has anyone noticed the pop-up ad on this page  - "Asian women for dating"?  Very classy, Y!A

Answer 8

one of them looks like shes 8! whats the point of having younger kids in it anyways? just wait until they're 16- they'll be better then anyways and have more experience

Answer 9

No chance in h**l they were 16. It sucks because it is not the athletes fault rather the Chinese govt for providing fake documentation. The fact that they are younger than stated does not take away from their feats however.

Answer 10

I came here to say something relatively stupid about the u.s. womens team and how cute they are.  They used to look skinny and nasty too in years past, but now I think our athletic world is smartening up a little.  Some of them actually look like females.  b*****s and all.

Anyways,  I read previous posts and got very sad for Chinese.  I guess there is a point to Yahoo answers if I can learn a thing or two or three.  yikes, horrible stories.  I just found my Sociology class research project.    p.s. the u.s. women are still pretty cute.

Seriously,though.  thanks for some education.

Answer 11

China is cheating.

From the New York Times:

"In Chinese newspaper profiles this year, He was listed as 14, too young for the Beijing Games.

"The Times found two online records of official registration lists of Chinese gymnasts that list He’s birthday as Jan. 1, 1994, which would make her 14. A 2007 national registry of Chinese gymnasts — now blocked in China but viewable through Google cache — shows He’s age as '1994.1.1.'

"Another registration list that is unblocked, dated Jan. 27, 2006, and regarding an 'intercity' competition in Chengdu, China, also lists He’s birthday as Jan. 1, 1994. That date differs by two years from the birth date of Jan. 1, 1992, listed on He’s passport, which was issued Feb. 14, 2008."

An admission of cheating in 2000:

"Yang Yun of China won individual and team bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and later said in an interview on state-run television that she had been 14 at the time of those Games. A Hunan Province sports administration report also said later that she had been 14 when she competed in Sydney."

China's People's Daily newspaper stating He Kexin's age as 14 on May 23, 2008:

"Olympic gymnastics title contenders suddenly have one more thing to worry about other than the eight gold medals China claimed at the Tianjin World Cup last week. Her name is He Kexin.

"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. She will be just one more weapon on an already star-studded Chinese Olympic squad."

Answer 12

They don't even look pre-teen to me. They look like they're 8.

Answer 13

I think your right but we'll never know. It's hard to judge age based on looks but considering there was controversy long before the competition started I have to feel they are under 16. Like I said we'll never know. It's impossible to verify so we have to go with what China says.

Answer 14

Omg I was waiting to see their ages on there and it never showed it! They looked like they were around 10-12.

Answer 15

Bring more false statement. How come I don't see any Chinese newspaper saying bad things about Mike Phelps? His arms as big as Jason Giambi and you are saying both of them didn't take any steroid? How come I never see a bad words from Chinese newspaper when USA dream team beat up China so badly? I never see any newspaper mention anything bad when USA dream team proves themselve so good and not CHEATING, UNFAIR, UNDER AGE??? Why don't you guys put a gun on other competitors when they agains USA athelets?

Answer 16

I don't think they are old enough myself, however, being that people from China tend to be smaller than Americans, you never know.  I wish they could find out for sure.  I wonder if the Olympic committee ever did an investigation and found out they were underage, if they would lose the gold medal and then the US would get the gold medal?!  Just a thought.  

Answer 17

Can we stop posting the same question over and over again?

No, I don't think they're 16.

Answer 18

I don't know....they really did look young!

But the Chinese have a totally different body type, even the older girl who was 20...was very very tiny and looked young.  I've been watching gymnastics for years and the Chinese always look younger than they are...it's just different from the American look of being more muscular.

The Chinese did a great job though and they deserved to win!

Answer 19

It's highly possible that they are of age. Asian women generally look younger than they really are.

Answer 20

they could not have been any bigger than my sister, who is 9, but she is super small for her age, so im betting like 5 and 6! there is no way they r 16, even if chinese ppl r short! (im not meaning that to be offensive, but its true) there is no way they r 16!

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...

Answer 21

They look like they are 11 and 12 and they put lots of make-up on to try to make them look older!

Answer 22

These girls definitely are under the age limit to compete.  The Chinese government has a rule that everyone has to be "essential" to the success of the country. Children are sent away to "sports factories" by their parents in order to learn diving, swimming, gymnastics, tennis and other sports. If not, they are sent to military schools to join the Red People's Army.

At the "sports factories", they live the sport they are "forced" to excel at and nothing else matters until they are released back to their parents, which is only when they "retire" from that sport to become a baby breeding machine after marriage.

Americans, on the other hand, have lives, can freely go to the mall or visit their friends, can say bad things about the government without fear of reprisals, do not get punished if they make mistakes while performing, don't eat dogs, can grow up doing whatever they want to do, visit the gym whenever they want, can leave the gym to go home to their parents, do not get kidnapped and brought to "reprogramming" centers, are more creative in gymnastics and don't need to cheat by having a communist country's government strong arm the judges by intentionally having them delay results while other athletes are awaiting their start time and falsifying birth documents

Answer 23

i absolutely agree

there is nooo way those girls were of age

they looked maybe 12 or 13 to me at the most

except for the team captain she did look like she was 15 or 16

well honestly the oldest out of all of them

but its pretty stupid they had to lie about there age to win gold..they should have played fair and gone with the rules even if that meant not gettin gold

lovelovelove

Audrey

=)

Answer 24

I haven't been keeping tabs on recent discoveries of their age, but I have to say this in their defense:

You have to realize that Chinese girls are not as developed as westerners at this age, generally.  Couple that in with exercises that constantly put negative impact on your body 15 hours a day, of course you aren't going to look older!  My Chinese friend is sixteen and she still looks 12.

Mandy B:  do you realize that they've been training since they were 3?  That one Chinese girl was interviewed, and apparently she's been away from her family ever since.  All she wants is "to go home".

Let me close this by saying they are great at gymnastics, but US women's was jipped.

Answer 25

In a totalitarian society, passports and documents mean nothing.  The girls probably don't even know how old they are at this point.  Most of them were chosen at 3-7 yrs. of age and taken from home to train.  Training was excruciating to the point of torture sometimes.  Parents would visit and admit to looking on and ignoring their daughter's pleas to return home, as being female, they are an only child due to China's one child only law.  This is these girls' life, and only purpose.

The rigorous training delays their development, sometimes they don't even start menstrual cycles until well into their twenties.  Children are not meant to exercise in that strenuous a manner.  They will always look younger than they are as far as their bodies are concerned, but if you look at their faces, you can see that some of them of little more than made-up babies, the Chinese versions of Jon-Benet.

I believe that China is lying about some of the gymnasts, but the IOC will not investigate, in the spirit of "diplomacy" for Beijing.  Human rights have been ignored there on a much grander scale throughout history without intervention by the outside world.  

Rather than talking about the unfair advantage; and there is one; tiny, nimble little girls have a much easier time in the sport.  Size and age and puberty change the body in a way to make it less aerodynamic.  They also have less nervousness, in the way of kids.  Their only fear, according to several former childhood gymnasts from China who moved to the U.S., is the abuse and retribution of their coaches, parents, and the loss of the support for their families that the government only gives when the kids are winning.  Let's talk about child abuse, and abuse of women, and cut the kids some slack. This thing will never change until the world stops accepting it.  It's not about sports.  

Answer 26

From the CNN News site...

Li Shanshan (16) is 4-foot-9, 79 pounds. Yang Yilin (15) is 4-foot-11, 77 pounds. He Kexin (16) is 4-foot-8, 73 pounds. Jiang Yuyuan (16) is 4-foot-7, 71 pounds. But the prize goes to Deng Linlin (16), who's listed at 4-foot-6 and a strapping 68 pounds.

Does that sound normal for 16 year old's?  Even Chinese 16 year olds are not that malnourished.  

Answer 27

they just look very young....they cant lie bout age...us also had some 16 yr olds...crazy how young they are

edit~ also it is impossible to go to the olympics at 13 lol...ok i just started gymnastics at 9 and i didnt get to level  4 or 5 till i was like 11( levels are like 1-10 , then elete ..then olympics) so they are the correct age 15-20)

Answer 28

i do think they are