Don't gripe about Chinese gymnast's age
Posted: Thursday, August 14, 2008 12:08 PM
BEIJING – I don’t know how old He Kexin, the 4-foot-8, 73-pound princess of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team is. Maybe she’s 14, as local newspaper reports said she was earlier this year. And maybe she’s 16 as her passport claims she is.
The International Gymnastics Federation, which goes by the acronym FIG, says the passport is proof enough for them. As the ultimate arbiters of the sport, what FIG says is the way it’s going to be.
But even if He is under the 16-year-old minimum age for gymnasts, it seems unbecoming of the American team’s director, Marta Karolyi, and the legendary gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi to be complaining that the Chinese cooked their diminutive heroine’s passport. The suggestion is that if the Chinese had had to fight fair with 16-year-old girls, Team America wouldn’t have finished second in the Olympic tournament.
If the United States had nailed every routine and not suffered a rash of crippling injuries and lost anyway, I might be willing to listen to the charges of age doping. But they didn’t. The American women had several costly mistakes and butt plants and falls that ultimately made it impossible for them to win. So it doesn’t matter how old He is. She didn’t beat the Americans. Injuries and mistakes did them in.
Considering the circumstances, silver wasn’t a bad prize to take home. The Karolyis, as the most visible people connected with the team, should concentrate on the positive aspects of the competition for their athletes. By focusing on He’s age, they’re just adding to the negativity that’s descended on the team.
They have a point about age. Marta Karolyi has said that FIG should ditch the 16-year-old age requirement so that this won’t be a continuing problem, which it is certain to be, especially in countries where official documents can be made to say anything the authorities want them to.
Going back to 14-year-olds would reintroduce other problems. The age limit was adopted because it was felt the younger girls’ developing bones were being physically endangered by grueling gymnastics training. But it’s clear that nobody’s backing off that much on the tiny tumblers. It’s doubtful that anyone’s been spared two-a-days because of her youth. And other sports don’t have the same worries about girls being too young to compete.
But this isn’t the time to be arguing that. With FIG and the International Olympic Committee both saying the case is closed, the whining just detracts from what all the athletes have accomplished. Take the issue up after the flame is snuffed, not before.
It is a bizarre issue anyway. Usually, when people lie about their ages, they make themselves younger, not older. It’s a ploy that’s been used by some Latin American ballplayers who feel that listing themselves as being younger than they are improves their chances of getting to the big leagues.
Then there was Danny Almonte, the Little League pitcher who made himself two years younger to become a hero in the Little League World Series before the ruse was discovered and he became a disgraced hero.
But in women’s gymnastics, tiny girls who haven’t yet matured have advantages over grown women, who have to deal with a changed center of gravity and wider hips. When 14-year-olds ruled the sport, puberty was a career-ending injury, and coaches and trainers used restrictive diets and sometimes drugs to delay it. It’s not something I’d let anyone do to my daughter, but not many people complained when the little girls were winning medals and charming audiences.
Anyway, regardless of what you think of what such young girls are put through, it’s going to keep happening. When a girl has the kind of otherworldly talent that Olympic gymnasts possess, all reason goes out the window. And the girls themselves are as willing as any other athlete to do what it takes to win.
He Kexin is one of those phenomenally gifted children, and she’s helped her country win gold. She’s got the documentation – forged or otherwise – that says she’s of legal age. We’ve no choice to let it go at that.
