“Chinese gymnastics team have won 17 golds in the previous Olympic Games, to which gymnasts from Hubei province contributed seven of them. Given the current situation in Hubei, how can I not be worried?” said Huang.

The head coach also noted that Chinese gymnastics has been suffering from “inner attrition” very badly in the last ten years. The new-found talent famine, according to Huang, is due to some structural problems and infightings [among teams at various levels].

“That China won 6 golds at the 2009 World Artistic Gymnastics Champs is only superficial, you all can’t see the crisis behind it!”

Huang said these words one week after the International Gymnastics Federation issued their decision to strip a gold medal won by team China at the Sydney Games after finding out there’s a “presumed violation of the age limit for participation” in the case of Dong Fangxiao, a female gymnast.

It suggests that the National Gymnastics Association may has decided to tackle the age problem in the country to prepare for competitions years after. For a country that has been supposedly getting ahead by staging underage gymnasts since, let’s say 2000, it could cost them golds at least in London.

The thing in Chinese gymnastics is, local teams and coaches at various levels have been following the trend of recruiting underage players and they understand clear that once the paperwork is done, it’s almost impossible to tell how old exactly a young lady is. So whatever agenda is on Huang’s mind to get things right, it’s no easy task.

Source: Wuhan Morning Post (武汉晨报 in Chinese)

Dong competing in the Sydney Games

Five golds, two silvers and four bronzes – the performance of Chinese athletes at the Vancouver Games has been nothing but outstanding during the celebration of Chinese New Year. But back home, sports officials in Beijing are fumbling, as a bronze medal the Chinese gymnastic team won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics could be stripped soon.

As gymnastics officials may have helped Chinese athletes falsify birth documentations just like the football and basketball teams have been doing in the country, it looks they forgot to remind the players that they should keep lying.

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) posted their ruling last Saturday on its Web site. Excerpt below:

In the case of Dong Fangxiao, the Executive Committee constituted that there was a violation to the FIG Statutes and Regulations. Consequently, the results obtained by Dong Fangxiao at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games have been cancelled. The FIG Executive Committee decision was forwarded to the IOC Executive Board with the recommendation to withdraw the Bronze medal obtained by the Chinese Team including the results of Dong Fangxiao in Sydney. In addition, the FIG Executive Committee pronounced the cancellation of all results obtained by Dong Fangxiao at the 34th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships 1999 in Tianjin (CHN), of all results obtained at the FIG World Cup Series 1999 – 2000 and at the Artistic Gymnastics 2000 World Cup Final in Glasgow (GBR) The costs of the disciplinary procedure are awarded to the Chinese Gymnastics Association.

The Committee decided that in the case of Yang Yun the concrete and objective evidence available is insufficient to prove that the birth date indicated on the official documents was falsified. Ms. Yang Yun is awarded with a warning for the declaration she made during the interview with CCTV5. The only mention of age in this case was on a television interview. The costs of the disciplinary procedure are awarded to the Chinese Gymnastics Association.

Should the punishment be made by the International Olympic Committee, it can kind of prove that the Chinese gymnastic team lied to the world, also putting the results at the Beijing Games highly questionable. And now the Chinese Gymnastics Association claims the evidence held by the FIG is unconvincing.

“We believe that to date, there is no sufficient evidence to prove that there were problems with Dong Fangxiao’s age in 1999 and 2000, therefore we feel great regret toward the FIG’s punishment decision,” a staffer of the association said last Saturday and later put their statement on its Web site.

The whole thing left us with a comical situation that while there’s evidence suggests the players were under age when they competed in the Olympics, without reliable help from sports science, it seems these young ladies can never get caught by lying.

And the problem in China is, if the players do get caught here, like the CBA players we’ve mentioned earlier (also see here and here), they face little punishment according to China’s sports law.

Call me a pessimist, but unless the new licensing system implemented by the FIG is super cool, it looks very unlikely that the age fraud shall be gone from here soon. Let’s hope not to continue the talk after the London Games.

Update 1: In an interview with China Youth Daily, Luo Chaoyi, director of Gymnastics Administrative Center under the General Administration of Sport, the top governing body of Chinese sport, said the age of Dong Fangxiao is her personal matter and the fact that Dong’s age had been shifted 3 yrs younger after her retirement was Dong and her family’s own practice. (According to the FIG’s findings, Dong registered a birth date of January 20, 1983 at Sydney but when accredited to act as “secretary” at vault at the 2008 Beijing Games, had declared her birth date as January 23, 1986.)

Links and Sources:

• The FIG: Sanctions pronounced!
• msnbc: IOC: No proof China cheated in gymnastics
• AP: China expresses regret over gymnastics punishment
• Time: Can Science Tell a Gymnast’s Age?
• China Youth Daily via NetEase: Dong Fangxiao’s age fraud a personal practice (in Chinese)

Photo: NetEase

He Wenna, China's first Olympic trampoline champion

Looks like it’s not just  in diving.

A misstep cost He Wenna (何雯娜), China’s first trampoline Olympic champion, 0.9 point in the final, ranking 5th by the end. And Zhong Xingping (钟杏平), an athlete from Guangdong team, won the champion. But He’s words after the final made one think that match-fixing at the 11th National Games is rampant.

Below’s an excerpt of an article from today’s Information Times (信息时报):

“I’m not surprised by the result,” said He, when asked about the defeat. “It’s dafen xiangmu (打分项目), a sport whose result is rated by the judges, so that’s that. I knew who would win this gold.” A reporter asked her to elaborate what she meant by dafen xiangmu, “you know what it is,” He replied.

He Wenna expressed disappointment about Fujian team’s loss.  ”…but something is fated long ago. It is what it is. It’s okay because [I or Fujian Province] already got a gold in the Olympics. And [I or we] don’t need this medal at the National Games.”

Check out the following video from Youku to see what the Olympic champion got for us after the match (in Chinese):

Previously:

• What’s with China’s National Games?

Links and Sources:

• Global Times: Fair play is sadly missing from Chinese sporting world
• Information Times via Sina: Zhong Xingping won trampoline champion at the Shandong Games (Chinese)
• South Metropolis Daily: “I knew who would win” (Chinese)
• Xinhua: Olympic trampoline champions Lu and He both upset at National Games

Deng Linlin from Anhui won the gold medal at the women’s gymnastics individual all-around finals at China’s 11th National Games on Saturday.

Deng, listed as “born on April 21, 1992,” played last year at the Beijing Games and won Team All-around Champion along with He Kexin, Li Shanshan and three other gymnasts.

We stumbled upon a fascinating post today on Asia Basket. Arthur Volbert, a US-based basketball writer who’s been closely following Chinese basketball, found that ages of 22 CBA players have been changed at the start of season 2008/2009. Below are some excerpts:

For Jiangsu, Tang Zhengdong went from being born in 1984 to 1982, confirming longtime rumors than he was older than his listed age. Others who became older were Han Shuo, Yi Li, Hu Xuefeng, Meng Da and Fang Hui.

For Liaoning, National Team member Zhang Qingpeng went from being born in 1985 to being born in 1981. Yang Ming, Gu Liye, Lu Wei and Liu Xiangtao also became older.

For other teams, there are the normal ups and downs with ages that happens in China. Guangdong’s Du Feng, a member of the National Team, went from being born in 1981 to being born in 1982. He keeps switching from one to the other and back, for some unfathomable reason.

Are we surprised by the news? Not at all. Your correspondent at CSR happened to be the schoolmate of two CBA players, one at Shanghai Sharks (上海大鲨鱼队) and the other at Bayi Rockets (八一火箭队), who both were officially listed last year by CBA as four years younger than we know. The two players are unfortunately not on Arthur’s list.

If someone digs, age-scandal stories of this kind can be found in almost every soon-to-be-nationalised football clubs in the country. The reason no one gives a hoot about it is because Chinese football has been lying there in a perennial slumber for so long. And oh, by Chinese football we mean men’s national football team. If you look at the performances of Chinese U17 or U20 men’s team you’ll find they’re actually not as bad as their elders, the U17 team even made it to the quarter-finals of FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2005 in Peru. This suggests that the pace, strength, stamina of these ‘boys’ outruned their foreign peers at the time. The bad news for Chinese footballers is their peers do grow, and we all know what can be expected later.

What Arthur found reminds us of the debate over ages in the Beijing Olympic Games, where two Chinese women gymnasts, He Kexin (何可欣) and Jiang Yuyuan (江钰源), were questioned whether their were below 16, the age women gymnasts are considered eligible to compete in the Games. “The girls are so little, so young,” said Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic all-around gymnastics champion at the 1984 Los Angeles Games to the New York Times when speaking of He. “They said she was 16, but I don’t know.”

Well, we don’t know either. But chances are the Chinese Gymnastics Association do, and they told media that the young ladies are old enough. We genuinely hope He and Jiang are not like those basketball and football players, otherwise they not only cheated their competitors but also themselves, and the gold medals they won will always remind them of what happened this summer.

Sources and Reads:

• Asia Basket: 22 CBA Players Change Birth Years
• The New York Times: Ruling Backs Chinese Gymnasts
• Sports Law Blog: Yi Jianlian’s Age, NBA Employment, and Immigration Law

Photo: Baidu Baike

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