somethin fishy in Beijing

While there is an obvious bias because I would have loved for our American gymnasts to come home with gold after last night's competition, I now have to wonder if the Chinese women really are too young to compete in the Olympic competition.

First, there were the fireworks during the opening ceremony, which have now been revealed to have been digitially altered by the host country.

The there was the case of the little girl lip-syncing because her voice wasn't good enough, and the girl whose voice WAS good enough wasn't "cute enough."

And now the age contraversy.  I'm sorry, but only one of the girls on the Chinese team even remotely looked old enough to be 16.  I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that the rumors are true and that the Chinese girls are truly 14, as websites that have now been blocked by Chinese authorities claim they are.  In past competitions, Jiang Yuyuan and He Kexin have been listed as 14 years old, born in 1994.  Suddenly, their passports, both issued this year, state that they were born in 1992, which would, in fact, make them legal to compete this year.

Normally, I wouldn't have paid any attention to the controversy, as anyone watching the competition last night knows that the Chinese outperformed our American team.  But in light of the other deceptions that the host country has already pulled, it makes the age of the gymnasts stand out that much more.  If the girls truly are underage, it therefore makes them ineligible for competition AND it makes the Chinese guilty of cheating by doctoring documents to allow these girls to compete. 

Just by looking at the Chinese team in comparison to EVERY other team in competition, the girls look like babies.  One girls even has front teeth missing.  I know that appearances can be decieving, but not one of them even slightly resembles a teenaged girl.  They look like the children a teenaged girl would be babysitting.

Do I know something for certain?  No.  But the fact remains that FIG, the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, which is the governing body for international gymnastics, has ignored published proof that the girls are too young to compete in senior-level competition.