Chinese GYMNASTS Lie About Their Age ...

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So after the olympics im sure everybody heard about how the chinese lied about their age. Well.. I am not sure what to beleive. They could have , but at the same time maybe they didnt who knows besides them right? Well lets say the chinese gymnasts are younger. Well... than shouldnt all of the other countries be scared ? I mean if the chinese are younger then... like they did better than 3/4 of all other gymnasts. And if its just cause they are small.. well then why doesnt the whole world accuse Shawn Johnson cause last I heard they were the same size but like.. skiinneer.. soo....
who thinks the chinese lied about there age ? I for one have doubts.
 
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Just remember you mean the 2008 Chinese WAG Olympic team, I seriously don't think your mean the entire Chinese population of the Planet was accused of lying about their age. That would be truly bizarre wouldn't it?
 
LOL I mean the 2008 Olympic WAG Gymnastics Team. I mean I dont think its fair that half or more of the world accuse them because they are small.. I dunno what do you think ?
 
I do not know if they lied or not, and that's beyond me to know what they did. IF they did, I think it's unfair because other countries, including us, could have prepared gymnasts younger and put in some girls [Rebecca maybe?]. I used to think the age limit was fair, I mean countries could just whip out gymnasts, maybe even some who didn't even care that much but just did it for the country and for other reasons. Being younger they also have the advantage of a not so worn down body and such. BUT know I'm not sure what I think is fair. I love Vanessa Atler, and I was watching the fluff where she was saying it's just stupid that a girl that loves the sport so much and has the potential and talent as the older girls, can't compete just because of the age. That changed my perspective, especailly seeing it from a hero of mine. I do agree with that, because why not? If I was in their posiition I'd think it was highly unfair that I couldn't compete just because of my age.
 
My dd is Chinese, we are caucasian. I honestly don't know if it's the food we feed her or genetics or just random, but she "looks" older than the girls she goes to Chinese School with who are being raised in Chinese homes. Then again, she also looks older than her best gym buddy, who is actually a couple of months younger.

However, I believe some of the controversy was because the birth dates had been different for different international meets the Chinese gymnasts had attended.

Looks certainly aren't everything.
 
Looks aren't everything, but paper trails are pretty incriminating. When your age changes through the years out of convenience, something is up. When coaches who have spent a lifetime in the sport and have many many years in international competitive experience raise an eyebrow something is up too. Children aren't a mystery to adults, certainly not ones who have competed against children in more than a few nations. Is there a chance they weren't lying? Sure. I'm a big believer in what the obvious reveals to the observant though. That's my dead horse beating post for the day!
 
Well looks arent everything ! And thats what the whole world was basing them on. Because they are tiny. And like.. so what ? They are tiny thats good for gymnastics !
 
Well looks arent everything ! And thats what the whole world was basing them on. Because they are tiny. And like.. so what ? They are tiny thats good for gymnastics !

I don't want to say you're wrong here, but you're wrong. Looks may have been the catalyst that made people investigate further but that's about it. The IOC doesn't investigate serious allegations like cheating off of subjective judgment of a teams looks. The paper trail I mentioned is truth and cause for concern. They had a history of changed ages on athlete registration through the years, that's evidence, not speculation. When the highest levels of government stand by it being a clerical error there's not much that can be done though. Honestly forgettting the evidence and remembering it as a looks based attack is probably what they want if indeed cheating did occur.
 
Oh , okay. I am not saying anybodys wrong. But like I was just asking for opinions in this case there is yours. It is not wrong. And your right. After I posted this I saw videos of a guy finding a chinese website that showed all of the girls ages. It was not a recent website either. It was a older site they said and after people started finding this out . It just randomally disopeared . Which in that case sounds like maybe they werent of age.
 
Alot of Asians, not just the Chinese, look very young. My mum went to Japan when she was 18 and her and her friend were heaps taller than the other 18 year olds. Mum said they didn't look 18.
So again, looks arent everything, the Chinese and other asians have a very different physique.
 
Supposedly the way to tell how old someone is would not be based on how tall or big the body is, but how big their eyes are compared to the rest of their face. Eyes don't grow as fast as the rest of the body (or maybe they don't grow at all, can't remember). So when you are 10 years old your eyes and face are a certain size. When you get to 16, your face grows a lot more then your eyes, so your eyes seem smaller because they are compared to your face.

I heard some expert say that based on the size of their eyes, she thought the Chinese gymnasts were about 12 or 13.
 
Eyes don't grow at all.

And though I do believe the gymnasts lied about their age, that's about the flimsiest "reasoning" I've ever heard.
 
Eyes don't grow at all.

And though I do believe the gymnasts lied about their age, that's about the flimsiest "reasoning" I've ever heard.

Okay Cynical-Chick. Lets think about this a bit more. I saw the same video that Crayola saw, and it's true. According to forensics a baby's iris takes up 100% of the eye opening, but when you are fully mature, it only takes up 50%. This happens REGARDLESS of race OR gender.
You may argue that people from asian origins tend to be shorter/lighter/generally smaller, but some things just don't add up. All of the Chinese gymnasts were 3-4 inches shorter and 20 lbs lighter than the American team. Don't start telling me that that's normal for 16 year olds who supposedly work out similar amounts of time. And also, the smallest American gymnast was Shawn Johnson at 4'10" and 90-100 lbs, while the smallest Chinese gymnast was 4'6" and 65 or so lbs. This is not normal. No matter how short you are, a sixteen year old girl should not weigh 65 lbs. It's just not healthy OR natural. Girls who have gone through puberty generally gain at least 10 lbs, and unless you're telling me that Deng Linlin weighed in her 50's at 16 years old, this is definitely a problem.
All in all, as someone has told me, nearly everyone knows that more then half of the chinese team was under 16 years old, but there is nothing that we can do about it now. That incident happened nearly 2 years ago, and what we should be focusing on now is to not let it happen again.

-GCG
 
the red flag for me, and i know cause i was there, is the fact that they were missing their baby teeth. adult teeth don't grow in when you're 16. they just don't.
 
...Did you read what I said? I do think they lied about their ages (but far, FAR more likely is they were forced into it by their government), but the "eye/face ratio" argument sounds pretty silly.

I mean... Deng Linlin wasn't even part of the 3 they mentioned in the US as "under suspicion of lying about their ages" - I thought she was about nine years old.
 
People aren't like trees. There is no definitive test for what age you are.

Besides, apparently there's a lot of reverse age cheating in China (saying you're younger than you are so you can enter in junior meets when you're a senior, happened to some basketball player as well) so those records on that website could also have been falsified. How reliable is the internet anyway? If I google my name I'm apparently a priest in Australia, and there's probably thousands of Deng LinLins and Yang Yillins in China.

How do you that it was a baby tooth that was missing? Did you conduct a tooth exam? Is it really that unlikely that she hit the bar and knocked one out during training?

If looks were everything, I'd just be starting high school, and as it is, I'm going to uni.

Also, it's not the gymnasts' fault. It's the governments.
 
cause i could see the secondary/adult teeth coming in. geesh. and you can biopsy the bones and come within days of a persons age, give or take. how on earth do you think the anthropologists come up with statements like "those bones are approximately 5000 years old"? you think they make that stuff up??

and cynical, i read what you wrote and i agree with you. you're preaching to the choir. and the eye/face ratio measurement is based in forensic anthropology. the science is true and accurate.
 
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