Chinese women gymnastics team loses its Olympic Bronze Medal
Chinese gymnasts are some of the best in the world. They consistently rank very highly in world athletic championships. But China also has an issue with its gymnasts, some have been found out to be underage. The legal age limit for competing in athletic competitions is 16 years old, and during the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney a Chinese women’s competitor who won a bronze medal was found out to be 14 years old. Now this is a big issue, because even though athletes and sports people start training and practising at a very young age 14 year old children should not be competing in full scale competition.
The bronze medal that was won by china was won by their women’s gymnastics team. Out of the team one of the athletes was judged to be of proper age being 16 but the other was found out to be 14. The team was stripped of their bronze medal which went to the US women’s team. What is interesting here is that first of all how could China allow an underage competitor to compete in the Olympics when they knew the rules full well and secondly isn’t 10 years a little late to be stripping medals and giving them to those that deserve them.
The age limit for athletics competitions is in place for a reason. It is there to safeguard the interests of the competitors and of the sport itself. Imagine the stress and heartache that an athlete must go through and even though they are trained from a very early age, it is still a lot of pressure to deal with for a 14 year old child. What is even more upsetting in this situation is the fact that the Chinese Olympics body and the coach and trainers of the women’s team allowed this to happen. It seems like some serious child manipulation took place here. The desire to win no matter the costs is a common theme among athletes and a lot of people will do anything to win, from taking steroids to fixing matches. That desire to come out on top is a very powerful motivating factor to, in some instances, do wrong things and try to skirt around the rules. This is why we see so many runners pumping themselves full of illegal substances to try and get that slight edge over the competition. It seems as if the spirit of friendly competition has gone out of the window and been replaced by this all consuming desire to win.
The coaches could have been under this very same spell because maybe being 14 years old in the women’s competition gives the gymnast an edge over her rivals because maybe she is able to perform the moves better or with greater ease. But in any case rules are there to be followed and it seems the punishment was not fitting for the crime committed. The coaches and trainers and Chinese women’s athletics body should all have been punished and reprimanded, maybe bans and warnings should have been handed out. In the committee’s finding in which the 14 year old gymnast was found, the committee couldn’t find enough evidence to show that she was under the age limit but they still handed her a warning. They should also have handed out warnings to the coaches, because in a situation like that a girl who is 16 and under a lot of pressure from her coaches, teammates and family members and is going to represent her country can be easily manipulated and swayed to do something she didn’t want to do.
The other bizarre thing about this story is that it took the Olympics committee 10 years to find out if the 2000 Chinese gymnastics squad had done something wrong. The question to be asked here is, what were they doing for 10 years and how long does it take to find evidence to prove someone’s age. Well at least some sort of justice was dished out in the end and hopefully the Chinese team has learnt its lesson and instead of sending over underage athletes they continue to send world class performers in the field of gymnastics.
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