Regardless of how I feel about the age restriction, it exists and lying to circumvent it is cheating. Cheating your way to a win is pretty sad in a lot of ways.
But in these cases it isn't the fault of the athletes, many of whom have little say over what happens to them, although they'll take most of the fall and have the most to lose when someone gets caught (exhibit A: Raducan). One of my longtime early gymnastics coaches trained at Bela Karolyi's facility in Romania and there's not a lot I can really support about that kind of system as a person, much less even bringing up issues of cheating in international competitions (although that certainly plays into many concepts of ultimately putting medals above all else). I don't agree with government officials who lie or control people in an effort to obscure truths that will endanger their power and personal wealth. This kind of systematic control and disregard for procedure is a symptom of much more complex bureaucratic deception. "We copied this from others" is not an acceptable answer. Unfortunately many of these officials have no one to answer to anyway. There's not honestly a lot anyone can do about proving faked documents but supporting this kind of deceit goes beyond them trying to protect the integrity of gymnastics in some twisted way. This is part of a national propaganda organ. It has very little to do with any individual gymnast and what is fair to her.
