http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2008/08/hack-olympics.html

14.

For this to be the case, rules and regulations are obviously required, and all countries should be expected to follow them. He is an amazing athlete, I will not contest that point at all, she deserved every one of the scores she received. Never-the-less, if seven media articles and multiple government documents all put her at an age below 15, then this deserves some serious investigation into how old she is.

To me it’s not a matter of who she beat, but that she should not have been there in the first place. No matter how this turns out, should she compete in London, I will be more than hapy to watch.

This is for people of all descent, race, ethnicity, sex, religious practice, etc. This is for all people who want to believe in this modern sports era that there are any fair sports left. This is not a matter of national pride, racism, or anything else all the chinese-supporting posters on here would try to make it seem.

You can call Americans poor losers because we are actively investigating whether or not a team is cheating, but even if we had lost we’d still be investigating. You’re attacks won’t bother us, quite as badly as your guilty conscious will bother you.

The Associate Press is doing the job the IOC and FIG were hired to do, but have been unable to fulfill.

Never in the history of journalism, fair or faked, have 7 separate news sources all printed the same mistake, let alone having made that same mistake in several issues of their publications. What’s more is when a mistake is printed about a person, there is a 99% likelihood that person HIM/HERSELF will contact the news source to have them correct the mistake. Nobody likes being misquoted, misrepresented, or having lies printed about them. NOBODY.

American journalists are FIRED just for misspelling names… how do you think an Editor at the NY Times would have handled misprinted ages, OVER AND OVER AGAIN? An official correction would have been published THE NEXT DAY, instead of several years later and conveniently in time for the Olympic games.

So it’s completely obvious the age reported by Chinese media until May of this year was true, and the new age they are reporting is false.

Furthermore there are multiple registration cards belonging to He Kexin for local meets in China listing here birthdate as Jan 1, 1994. Can’t fake those multiple times either…

Perhaps the most offensive part of all this is the Chinese Government’s complete disregard for personal freedom. I do not suppose anybody with the opportunity to play in the Olympics would actually say “no, i wont lie about my age for this opportunity,” but supposing someone did object…

do you suppose the Chinese Government would respect the rejection? Or do you suppose they would simply tell the girl “It doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is the prosperity of China, and for China to have respect, you need to be 16 years-old.” I don’t claim to know, but I suspect the latter.

The bottom line is you’ve got to be
a) brainwashed
b) ignorant
c) mentally handicapped
d) some combination of all the above

to honestly believe these girls are the legal age. Sure you can say we still shoulda beat them, and if we played our best gymnastics we would have won. But this isn;t about winning. If the US team had come in dead last place, I would still feel as passionate about this.

Deng Linlin is listed in the same roster as being born in 1992, which I do not doubt.

@ Mulan — There has long been great concerns about how young girls are treated by gymnastics coaches. This is not a Beijing 2008 issue. This was an issue in the 80s and 90s, in both Eastern Europe and in America. Severe restriction of food and eating disorders was one issue. I remember reading a book that absolutely slammed the Americans for it.
I believe the reason it applies to this sport and not others (note the 14-year-old British boy on the diving team) is because female gymnastics does particularly lend itself to having the smallest people possible, and was considered to be particularly open to abuses. And, speaking of the British boy, there was debate in the U.K. over whether it would be dangerous to push someone of his age to compete.
And, really, name-calling doesn’t help.