It's the age thing

Of the lot of sporting events in the Olympics this fortnight, the event that Ling seems most interested in is the woman’s gymnastics. How’s that? Well, she was a school gymnast herself you see. As for myself, I’ve run a network cable from my router in the workroom into the living room—the wireless access doesn’t work so well—and armed with a connected notebook, I’ll watch everything and anything that’s on, even men’s handball (!).

So, it was rather bad luck that neither of us caught the women’s team gymnastics finals the other day. But lo behold; there’s now yet another strange episode in what cynics are starting to call the Fake Olympics (it used to be Drug-Ridden Olympics in yester years). Yeah, as though the controversies over the CGed fireworks, then child singer switcheroo, then volunteers to fill seats for supposedly sell-out events weren’t all enough, here comes another one. And we’re not even halfway past the competition.

It’s the age issue of the Chinese gymnasts again after they took Gold. Barely minutes after the American gymnast team lost the medal to the Chinese, the former US head coach openly questioned again whether the Chinese winners had met the minimum age to compete at all.

News media is certainly smelling another onion and picking up this story. E.g. the photo on the right here comes from Kansascity.com and with the caption “So does China’s Deng Linlin look like a 16-year-old?”

I hear ya. Those grapes sure are sour eh. Ironically, the American gymnasts themselves are retrospective; they’ve admitted they just didn’t perform as well as they could have. It’s the American officials who are clearly upset. But for the sake of argument, if you were to discard the probability that these are just sore losers talking, there’s still the very disturbing fact that the ages stated on the winners’ official states just doesn’t sync with local newspaper articles and online records. And if you think age falsification in gymnastics is unheard of, think again.

OK, so I tell my students that the Internet is the Wild West and to take what’s on it with two wheelbarrows of salt. So many of my students think that everything that Google throws up equals “serious” and “academic” research for instance. But the pundits will then tell you that this is about a country that produces the world’s best fakes, so is a little passport forgery going to be all that technically impossible for these wizards if they set their mind to it.

Ironically, so many of us are the beneficiaries of these, er, products. I should know. I used a Benro tripod and we all know it’s a knock-off from The Mother of All Tripods i.e. Gitzos. And my heart skips a heartbeat when I check newly-arrived memory cards I get off eBay. But they work, so what do I care. And if you’re a Ken Rockwell fan, you’ll want to read his take on MIC or Made-in-China products too for a non-conventional perspective of the issue.

But coming back to the age issue, the International Gymnastics Federation is hearing none of it and insists there is no evidence of under-age participants in the competition (but whatdayaknow, they’re now instituting age monitoring). And at least one person here in Singapore a.k.a. little Red dot insists this is the work of the green eye and just China-bashing on the part of the West.

I wonder if in my life time I’ll get to witness an Olympics that isn’t saddled with these unhappy controversies. Yep, the perfect Olympics where it’s all about ability.

Hey, I know what I’ll do. I’ll buy the Beijing Olympics – The Official Video Game! Yeah, my own sandbox with no drugs, no fakery, no singer switcheroo!

But what’s this? It scored a 3.0 / 10 in game ratings…?! Gaaaaahhhh!!!!! All’s lost…! Someone just shoot me right now.:(