A gymnast who turns 15 this year will turn 19 in 2012. Nastia Liukin turns 19 this year, and she won a gold (in the individual all-around, no less), three silvers and a bronze.
Would you like to tell her that her peak years are over?
I thought I posted something earlier in the day, and it appears that the hamsters ate it, or something.
16 may not be an objectively perfect measure, but the line ought to be drawn somewhere, just like the age of majority or the age for receiving Social Security needs to be drawn, exceptions notwithstanding.
Why? Because what China is doing is running nothing more than a child labor sweatshop for athletics. If He had been working in a textile factory, threading bobbins with efficiency far beyond what an adult could hope to achieve, with the sweatshop managers keeping the children from their families, forging documents to pretend that everything is above board, we’d all join in in condemning the Chinese government for allowing the exploitation of children for commercial gain.
But the gain sought by the Chinese government in this case isn’t commercial, it’s the most temporal of political benefit (how many will remember the Beijing games in three years?).
Yes, she is a great athlete. But I think having some minimal standards for who can compete in the Olympics, regardless of physical ability, is greatly similar to the arguments for laws limiting child labor. Children are not fully able to make informed choices about how they spend their lives, irregularities in how children are raised leave an imprint that is carried on through adult life, and the odds of exploitation is far, far greater than the chance of realizing success.
Just think about it: how many children were taken away from their families for what is apparently a Stalinistic olympian training program, and how many of those are chaff that are likely thrown away into society after failing to bring them up as a child ought to be? For every He, there are likely dozens or hundreds of children, talented as they may be, who were coerced into athletic sweatshops only not to make the cut and be expelled having missed so many of their formative years to a single-minded training regimen.
Hell, yes, the medal should be stripped. Not because this athlete isn’t capable of amazing feats, but because we ought to make participation in the Olympics and other competitions a matter of individual choice, not a Machivellian exercise of state power that almost certainly is to the detriment of very young children.
Word, Ravenman, word. If only I could believe the IOC were going to do something about it.
Regards,
Shodan
Of course the medals should be stripped. If you break the rules of the sport, then you can’t win- that’s how sports work. I feel bad for He, but there really isn’t much option here. If the IOC can reasonably show that her documents were falsified, they should take the medals away.
I feel bad for He, but what can you do? Her age is an unfair advantage to the Chinese team, who don’t have to compete with 14 year olds. I think at this point her scores will have to be marked with an asterisk if they are allowed to remain, and even that’s an insult to the other competitors.
Talk of banning the Chinese women’s gymnastics team altogether in 2012 is interesting. It’s a shame to think of banning the talented gymnasts from China who will be between 16 and 20 at the time (like He) and in their prime, but as long as China’s government has shown that they’re willing to systematically defraud the IOC, it might be a reasonable option. Olympic teams have been banned before, though not for cheating, at least to my knowledge.
The IOC Chairman just stated on NBC that if the gynmasts are found to be underage, they will “definitely” be stripped of thier medals.
He also said that there will be a statement forthcoming within the next half hour or so regarding thier findings.
Yeah, but that’s what… six years? Big deal.