The (presumably) Chinese posters in this thread are really grasping at straws. It's quite painful to watch, really.
Here's the question I have....if these girls were just issued passports in February, how did they travel to their international meets last year without a passport?
They used their REAL passports with their correct birthdates.......which started this whole controversy. The Chinese federation is cheating it is obvious. DD
Once in a while, before you have an opinion, you should try to read the entire article ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/sports/olympics/10age.html
DD, you never had a passport before, and it never expires? From the article you linked, I could see that IOC is officially fine with the age of those Chinese girls. FIG is officially fine with the age of them, and the president of US Gymnastics is fine with it. But Karolyi believed Chinese are cheating, so his belief weighs more than any official bodies? He was basically saying that he used to cheat all the time in East Europe, so China must be cheating now? It cracked me back when Costas interviewed him yesterday in NBC, he claimed the current judging system left lots of room for cheating. Of course, he didn't want to say that East European countries are the most powerful bodies in international gymnastics stage, including governing officials and judges. After US girls fell to 2nd place in qualifications, he came out with all these built-in excuses? Where was he when 15 year old US girls won World Championship in 2007? The same judging system is fine as long as US are winning, but not fair EVEN when Chinese are just leading in qualifications? Where was he when 14/15 year old Romanian girls won Gold medals? BTW, Enrico Casella, the coach of the Italian women’s team, was quoted following in the same article: “By looks, you could say that the United States is using doping,” Casella said. “They are so muscular. My gymnasts in Italy aren’t that big. You begin to wonder how they got that way.” Of course, if it comes to US, it's innocent till proven guilty. When it comes to China, if it's negative, it must be true.
You need to go back to college and study statistics harder, Chinese women are averagely shorter than Americans, so it's much easier to finder shorter girls at their 16. And given 1.3 billion population, it's even easier to finder shorter girls for gymnastics and still have a decent chance to find tall girls for volleyball/basketball, etc. Anyway, my two cents in this story: 1. Chinese people, especially women, looks younger in your eyes. Just like American girls look much older than their real age when I fist came to USA. Believe me, when I first watched those "barely legal" video, I though I was robbed as most of them looked 25+ to me, But I have learned to add a few years in my mind after. Sorry I digress, but the point is I could see these girls are in their 15-16. 2. Could the IDs of these girls be faked? I wouldn't be surprised if it is either, just like the controversial ages of Yi, and other Chinese basketball/soccer players, or like I wouldn't be surprised that if many track&field, swimming, cycling, weight lifting athletics, Chinese or non- are doping one way or another. 3. They age limit is stupid, just like the limit of one player/pair for each table tennis competition. On a lesser scale, I don't understand why weight lifting/boxing have so many classes while high/long jump can only have one. Otherwise I may have a chance to compete at a higher level,
LOL. yeah I wouldn't trust a "barely legal" p*rn vid as a barometer of what American girls at that age look like. A lot of those "18 and horny" chicks have been 18 and horny for about 7 years, pigtails and botox will help the cause. Its pretty subjective really, I have seen 18 year old chicks who looked like they were 12, and some that looked like they were 28.
A Chinese guy at work once told me, the Chinese from the North are pretty tall, 6 foot+ are pretty common he said. The ones from the South are much shorter, in general.
Everyday I come to this forum to LOL at the irrational, paranoid, schizophrenia Chinese posters! Thank you my fellow Americans, Texans or Houstonians( if you're happened to be in H-town) to keep the Chinese posters honest. A special thanks to DaDa for the above and beyond the call of duty to provide proofs, your heroic, herculean effort is much appreciated. " One World One Dream" MY ASS !!!!!!
Thank you moes for your in depth analysis of the "barely legal" p*rn videos. I respect the posters who take the time to enlighten those who aren't as knowledgeable as themselves on certain topics.
Agree, when I first came to US for high school, I was like Wow Wow Wow, look at those boobs, they are much fully developed than a 25+ Chinese girl. also some girl look even like 30 or 40 at least.
I heard about this at lunch... IIRC, didn't the province paper say she was 14? it was a bio on the girl and the paper was proud and was just being honest... Bottom line, they cheated, period end of story...Now, if anything is done about it, well, that's a different story...
I am shocked, SHOCKED that there are Chinese posters on Clutchfans who refuse to believe anything that might put China in an unfavorable light. Course there are also American posters who if we started bombing Canada tomorrow for having tuque's of mass destruction, would say "Of course we are justified, those winter hats threaten Democracy itself". I don't see a huge advantage in using underage athletes. (The gymnastic commentators made mention of younger athletes being at an advantage because there are only so many times the human body can stand the intense strain of competing at that level.) That said if they are willing to disqualify people for other things..an age rule violation seems like could have some serious consequences.
The age falsification thing is well known in gymnastics; it's not China's first time to do it, and the Romanians used to do it on a regular basis. It's easy enough to prove; earlier competition records show the person's actual age (or closer to it) and then all of a sudden a couple of extra years get added on. Many ex-gymnasts will admit it. (Not to mention what are the odds of so many people being born on January 1?) The reason for the age limits in gymnastics is to make sure it is a women's sport instead of a girls' sport. Younger girls tend to be more flexible and have fewer chronic injuries, even if they don't have the maturity and training. Back when the age limits were lower by a couple of years, there was still some age falsification, and I remember hearing one gymnast referred to as "ancient" for still competing at 19. Things are a little better now in that a lot of champion gymnasts are about 20. Having no age limits or low age limits tends to encourage starting girls very, very young, overtraining them, and using them up by their mid- to late teens. Chronic injuries still tend to be a problem, and many of them haven't known what to do with themselves after leaving the sport. It still seems cruel that, between the nature of women growing less flexible as they age and the unfair emphasis on something that happens once every four years, girls may only have one shot at Olympic glory. One of our current team members was a world champion before and after 2004 but was injured at just the wrong time to make the Athens Olympic team; she took the unusual step of hanging in there four more years and made this one, but now some injuries have hit at just the wrong time and she's not able to compete much. It's not a perfect world, but I still favor the age limit in that it seems to have been able to buy a little time for gymnasts to grow up. With appropriate rest and careful training, some gymnasts can extend their careers well into adulthood (Germany's Oksana Chusovitina is 33). The current U.S. system does not encourage this, however, because of overtraining during Olympic years. My opinion on what's happening here and happened in 2004 is that they have these girls peak for Nationals, Trials, and Selection Camp all in the same year, fight to get selected for the team at each of these stages, and then are supposed to have the energy left to peak for the Olympics, and (more difficult) to not be hurt. The injuries show up late after the team has been named, or has started podium training and cannot replace a girl with an alternate, and you end up with situations like you saw last night. Not to mention that, once somebody is on the Olympic team, she's going to want to fight through whatever injury she has to compete, so some of the ones who are still competing are more hurt than they appear. Fortunately, as far as I know, Shawn and Nastia are OK. Nastia qualified for three event finals and 2nd going into All-Around, and she was one of the 14-year-olds we had to leave off the team in Athens. At least at 18 she can do women's instead of girls' gymnastics. (that said, I don't blame the Chinese girls... they were pretty much put in line and told what to do, it's not the girls' fault...)
When the fack is this effin' thread moving to the D&D...? Get it out of here! Is there anything about poop/relationships/HDTV/soccer/FireFox/cwebbster's_girlfriends in this thread? If no, then it doesn't belong in the Hangout.
So from this thread we learned that gymnastics is evil and should therefore be banned as a sport for the well-beings of young teenagers. Awesome.
