A five-ring circus of questions is swirling around a Chinese gymnast and whether she was too young to compete at the Beijing Games.
He Kexin, part of Tuesday’s gold medal-winning team, should have been ineligible to compete at the Olympics because she was under the age of 16 – something that was revealed by China’s government-run news agency.
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Xinhua reported in November 2007 that He was 13 – three years younger than what is required by the International Olympic Committee to compete in gymnastics events – and even went as far as to describe her as a “little girl.”
The report was still posted on Xinhua’s Web site yesterday morning, but the page was not accessible when The Associated Press tried a few hours later.
Xinhua refused to comment on the discrepancy.
The IOC has said that a passport is the “accepted proof of a gymnast’s eligibility” and that the team had presented documents that show they are age eligible.
He, whose birthday is listed as Jan. 1, 1992, on her passport, will compete for another gold in Monday’s uneven-bars final.
“My real age is 16. I don’t pay any attention to what everyone says,” He said.
Chinese officials insisted on Wednesday that He and the rest of the team’s gymnasts – who look as if they had stolen their mothers’ makeup kits – are old enough to compete at the Olympics.
Although US officials have not called for the Chinese to be stripped of the gold, Bela Karolyi – the famed former gymnastics coach and NBC analyst whose wife, Martha, coaches the US women’s team – accused them of forging documents even before the event began. “They are obviously kids – 12 or 14, max – and you’re telling the world they are 16?” he said. “What arrogance!”
If the age reported last year by Xinhua was correct, that means He was too young to be on the Chinese team that beat the United States on Wednesday to clinch the women’s team event.
A story earlier this year in the China Daily, the country’s largest English-language newspaper, also reported that she was 14 years old.
Zhang Hongliang, an official with China’s gymnastics delegation at the Games, said the differing ages that have appeared in Chinese media reports had not been checked in advance with the gymnastics federation.
“It’s definitely a mistake,” Zhang said of the Xinhua report. “Never has any media outlet called me to check the athletes’ ages.”
Asked whether the federation had changed their ages, Zhang said, “How would we have the ability to do that?
“We already explained this very clearly. There’s no need to discuss this thing again.”
Two other team members are being eyed as underage.
Time magazine reported on its Web site that government records list Jiang Yuyuan’s birthday as Oct. 1, 1993, making her 14.
Records for Yang Yilin show her birthday as Aug. 26, 1993, also making her 14. A passport later produced by the Chinese government states she is 16.
The US team, which featured college-age athletes, looked more like the Chinese gymnasts’ baby sitters than their competitors.
Further fueling the controversy is the size and appearance of the pixie-ish Chinese gymnasts competing at these Summer Games.
The Chinese have an average height of 4-foot-9 and weight of just 74 pounds.
The women on the US team are an average of 3½ inches taller and 30 pounds heavier.
Following the United States’ loss to China, Martha Karolyi said, “One of the girls has a missing tooth,” suggesting the gymnast was still losing her baby teeth.
The smile sported by Deng Linlin, listed as 16, revealed a wide gap. “I have no proof [of any underage athletes], so I can’t make an affirmation,” Karolyi added. “But it possibly could be true. That doesn’t give an even playing field. Certain countries go by the rules, and certain countries may not.”