Gymnastics’ ageless age issue

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BEIJING –- Some Western media outlets here for the Games have been discussing the issue of some Chinese gymnasts reportedly being underage.

Some blogs have been especially active in the last few days, including at least one that shows a spreadsheet that, when broken down, helps to detail the ages of some athletes at the time of various competitions, including last year’s world championships. The blogs make it sound new. It is not.

There have also been discussions on this blog about whether Bela Karolyi was being unfair in his constant challenges about the Chinese ages.

To discuss whether Karolyi used a poor choice of words in his imperfect English when he called the Chinese girls “half people” is absolutely fair game. But in those same discussions it has been suggested that news reporting about the age issue has unfairly targeted the Chinese because of their small size and young faces.

And that’s not quite the case.

On Monday, July 28, before the Olympics began, I used documents that were confirmed as registration lists from Chinese sports provinces, stories printed in Chinese media and various websites including government sites that were taken down from the Web and a spreadsheet of the constantly changing tableau of Chinese gymnasts’ ages.

That story and one written by the New York Times a day earlier were not based on physical appearances but from printed documents and data.

Suddenly, now that the gymnastics competition is over, bloggers are back on to the underage story using online “screen grabs” of many of the same documents used in the Los Angeles Times story.

The bottom line is two newspapers published articles based on documents that indicated certain athletes were underage. And the Chinese government, in response to those articles, produced passports, to prove the athletes were old enough. The International Gymnastics Federation, FIG, has played dumb, saying it is not an investigative unit and that it will accept passports issued by entering nations as the gospel.

Even other evidence reported in the Los Angeles Times story about a 2000 Games Chinese gymnast named Yang Yun who said herself that she was an underage 14 at the Sydney Olympics was brushed off by FIG President Bruno Grandi as being worth less than a passport she was issued in 2000 that listed her as 16. There is a YouTube clip of Yang saying she was 14 in Sydney. No documents. Just Yang.

Believe the documents or don’t. Believe Yang or don’t.

That’s what presenting evidence is about, making a case. But some readers have e-mailed to complain that we in the media have ignored the age issue. At least in this space, that’s not the case. And others have suggested by presenting the information we were making judgments based on natural racial characteristics or nationalistic biases. Again, at least in this space, that’s also not the case.

-- Diane Pucin