What's the controversy about the chinese girls gymnastics group?

Question

I heard the chinese government were cheating by changing they're chinese girls's age to make them 'legally' 16.What's really going here?

Answer 1

I think they are underage. Their ages were reported to be 14 in two separate government owned news agencies, an inner-city registration list, and one of the gymnast's own coaches.

Americans are not saying this out of "poor sportsmanship". It was reported in the New York Times in July.

China has a history of age falsification in the Olympics. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics Chinese gymnast Yang Yun competed and won a bronze medal in the uneven bars. Yang's passport said she was born on December 24, 1984 and turning 16 in the year of the Games, making her eligible. She later confessed in a television interview that she was only 14 at the time of the competition and that she and her coaches had lied about her age.

Answer 2

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 3

Man you are really slow.  There have been tons of similar questions being asked here since at least 10 hours ago.  Would you please just stop being ignorant and enjoy the rest of the event?

Answer 4

If the chinese girls are under-age, and there is no definitive proof that they are, then that makes their feat even more amazing. That a team of little kids can beat americas best.

Answer 5

I asked the same question and got an excellent answer:

16 yrs they have billions of people to choose from why would they break the rules I would say their second best team would win all the medals as well and probably their third best team would as well .

People should just accept they are good gymnasts and stopped hinting that they are cheats and get with the spirit of the games which seems to be sadly lacking on yahoo tonight.

Answer 6

well after nadia ( the first perfect score ) went 2 the olypmics at 12 years old they changed the rules where you have to be 16 to be in the olympics because they felt that they were pushing the girls to hard to young!  but this year they caught several chinese girls that were to young, and they still believe that 1 of them is about 13 or 14!

Answer 7

there are records showing that 3 of the 6 girls on the team are only 14 but their passports state that they are 16, the legal competing age. look at them and decide for yourself.

Answer 8

Younger girls would have an huge advantage over everyone else.