I don't know what the big deal is with the investigation - why not just cooperate and provide unaltered birth certificates, hospital/physician
records & school class pictures to compare ages with classmates they went to school with or what ever proves the girls age. If they turn out to be 16
the only egg will be on the faces of the accusers.
At this point, there will be investigations in their hometowns. People will be going to their schools & where they were born etc. It's not too hard
to figure out what year they were in which class and who the other students were. What are they going to do photo shop school class photos from the
past and collect all the old photos and hand out new ones to fake classmates the same age? They'd have to alter two photo records for each instance
of change and each person in both classes would have to have their old photos found & destroyed. No matter how many people change & hide records they
will never be able to hide them all.
It's just to complicated to lie - that's why I try not to. Governments do it all the time - but not usually merely for gold medals.
Somebody will eventually stand up and tell the truth. The longer the lies go on the worse it will be in the long run for everyone.
What did you expect happens when you become the best in the world at something? They knew they get tested for drugs and their past will be looked at
not just for eligibility, but because people want to know who they are & where they came from and how they got to be the best. When people start
seeing records from old competitions that the ages don't match up - that is a problem. The world is not stupid - you aren't the first ones trying to
lie.
Obviously there is a problem when they showed up and competed in other events and listed their birth dates differently than they did for the Olympics.
Then China attempts to delete the records, but they forgot there's always copy's & backups in the computer world. It's called Computer Forensics
and it's one of the jobs I do from time to time - recovering lost data.
Now - I don't agree with the 16 year old rule, but obviously the people involved in the sport made it for a reason and everyone who participates has
to go by the same rules.
Allot of people think this will go away or that they can hide the truth - they're wrong. Everyone has leaves traces & records from the day they were
born and those records will be followed deleted or not. There is too much data at this point to erase two years of someones existence completely,
because everyone they come in contact with and everything they've ever done would have to be altered.
By NANCY ARMOUR and JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press Writers
Age falsification has been a problem in gymnastics since the 1980s after the minimum age was raised from 14 to 15 to protect young athletes from
serious injuries. The minimum age was raised to its current 16 in 1997. Younger gymnasts are considered to have an advantage because they are more
flexible and are likely to have an easier time doing the tough skills the sport requires. They also aren't as likely to have a history of injuries or
fear of failure.
North Korea was barred from the 1993 world championships after FIG officials discovered Kim Gwang Suk, the gold medalist on uneven bars in 1991, was
listed as 15 for three years in a row. Romania admitted in 2002 that several gymnasts' ages had been falsified, including Olympic medalists Gina
Gogean and Alexandra Marinescu.
Even China's own Yang Yun, a double bronze medalist in Sydney, said during an interview aired on state broadcaster China Central Television that she
was 14 during the 2000 Games
News Link
[edit on 23-8-2008 by verylowfrequency]
