It would do more harm to the Olympics (and the Olympic committee) in general and the sport in particular to let her keep her medals if it’s proven she was under age. I totally sympathize with her, I agree she is definitely one of the victims here…but it would be worse all around if they let her keep her medals.
Again, why have rules if someone can break them without consequence? And if you allow this…well, it’s kind of a slippery slope to allow anything. Why should anyone lose their medal for cheating if that is the case?
Letting her keep them hurts all the people who played by the rules and lost. I’m not sure why you’d bring up death.
You can’t set up a system that lets competitors successfully ask for forgiveness. That would make no sense, and would encourage people to cheat. I’m not even sure what logical basis you could possibly be using to argue that she be allowed to keep the gold.
Before this hacker got on the case, the New York Times or the Associated Press, or both (I forget) uncovered a few documents from previous gymnastics meets that gave the same age. Just like what this guy found, they were online and had been removed or recently altered. They also found a few articles, including one by Xinhua, the Chinese government news agency, and indicate she’s 14 now. This has been unraveling for about a month. This guy followed up on it but didn’t break the story.
Oh good, we are back to you ignoring the Olympic rules.
Whoever came in fourth was completely deprived of her medal by the Chinese Gymnastic team and the child that went along with it. These women were the top 3 age 16 above. It is pretty simple. If He Kexin’s is under 16 she was not eligible and thus those that followed the rules deserve to get their medals.
I don’t see how. If they don’t like losing then they should practice harder.
I think there are better ways to remedy the situation than punishing the kid. Maybe they can give extra medals to the losers but still let the kid keep hers. Taking her medals away punishes her but does nothing to China. Excluding them next time is a better idea. I thought it was an exceedingly bad idea to let them host an Olympics in the first place.
First, because it defeats the whole point if you don’t have the best in the world competing.
Second, it is unfair to the athletes. Think about what it means for a gymnast who turns 15 in an olympic year. They will not be allowed to compete in the olympics at any time during the entire peak of their career.
Third, because an arbitrary age requirement fails to take into account differing rates of development.
The other gymnasts have no complaint. The rule should not exist, so they still should have lost.
The only ones with a complaint are the underage gymnasts from other countries who were not allowed to compete.
Having said that, I can’t think of a way to let her keep the medal if it is proven she is underage. To do so would be to admit that the rules are meaningless, which would increase cheating of all kinds.
If it is proven, they will have to take the medal, but in any case the rule needs to be abolished.
:smack:
Could someone please find the words to get **DtC ** to understand the simple fact that the Olympic committee determined that kids have an unfair advantage over women in gymnastics? I have failed obviously.
It’s problematic to offer all athletes that excuse, but again, we’re talking about a sporting system where promising athletes are identified and removed from their families at age 3 and 4, to talk to their parents rarely and see them even more infrequently. I disagree with Dio about taking the medal - although he does raise a good point that if she gets disgraced, someone’s going to get scapegoated; I don’t think it’ll be He, but someone in the sporting federation or the passport department, or both, will go down even though they were acting on orders from superiors - but this is not something that goes on in every country.
What’s unfair about their advantage? The rule doesn’t exist because their advantage is unfair (that’s like saying tall guys have an unfair advantage in basketball). The rule exists to prevent child exploitation, not because of any unfair advantage.
