Hacker Uncovers Chinese Olympic Fraud

SkeptOlympics writes "A new chapter in the ongoing controversy surrounding China's women's gymnastics team opened today, as search engine hacker stryde.hax found surviving copies of official registration documents issued by China's General Administration of Sport of China. The incriminating documents, expunged by censors from the official site and from Google's document cache, still appear in the document translation cache of Chinese search giant Baidu, here (1) and here (2), showing the age of one of China's gold medal winning gymnasts to be 14 instead of 16, the minimum age for competition presented on her government-issued passport. Now that official government documentation is available, how long will the IOC be able to keep a lid on this scandal?" I imagine the answer is "Forever."

Re-education

Uh oh, some poor sysadmin at Baidu is in need of "re-education".

Re:Re-education

This is actually incredibly likely

See http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/peter_foster/blog/2008/08/20/the_ioc_plays_appeaser_in_beijing [telegraph.co.uk] for recent prior art.

Nothing will happen

China has already taken their official stance. They just don't care about the rules and don't care what other people think about it.

Re:Nothing will happen

More importantly, the IOC has taken their official stance, too.

Re:Nothing will happen

And their stance is about as ridiculous as it gets. They've stated that the girls passports are sufficient proof of their age. (Well, there's slightly more to it than that, but that's what it boils down to.)

Great idea, accept documents created by the very people accused of cheating as proof that they didn't cheat.

I imagine so as well

The IOC are making themselves look pretty scummy by association at the moment. They seem complicit in various pieces of fraud and dodgy dealings, and perfectly willing to help cover everything up.

But then I've never held them in that high a regard anyway. They're a business and they make the world's governments beg like puppydogs to be allowed to hold their games.

Frankly I find the whole thing to be something of a joke, and an incredible waste of money.

Re:I imagine so as well

The IOC are making themselves look pretty scummy by association at the moment.

If it makes you feel better, the IOC has always been scummy.

Re:I imagine so as well

"People, people, please! You're forgetting what the Olympics are all about:
giving out medals of
beautiful gold,
so-so silver and s
hameful bronze. "
Simpsons

Minimum Age

Why is there a minimum age to begin with? I think if a 14 year old can compete at the level of those a few years older, she should be allowed to. Is the age requirement only in gymnastics? Wasn't Michael Phelps 15 in his first Olympics in 2000?

Re:Minimum Age

It's to do with the safety of the competitors (underdeveloped bones etc.) as gymnastics takes much more of a toll on your body than swimming (being exceedingly hig. I would wager being younger, and lighter, also helps on things like the Asymmetric Bars.

Re:Minimum Age

As I understand it, there's a huge performance difference between just a few years, smaller girls rotate faster and are quicker. It's like the difference between weight classes in boxing, you pair like against like.

But more to the point, the rule is the rule. You don't ignore a rule in the competition just because you don't agree with it. The Dolphins can't put 50 guys out on the field just because they suck and think they need the extra help, regardless of what the rules say.

China is cheating, end of story. And the IOC is corrupt, go figure.

Re:Minimum Age

smaller girls rotate faster

I wouldn't say stuff like that in public, dude.

Re:Minimum Age

The younger you are, the smaller you tend to be. If you are smaller, you can spin/rotate faster (pure physics there). Additionally, you are more flexible, so you can perform certain maneuvers that get more difficult as you get older. There also is a "fear" issue that plays a small part where a younger person, not having the same number of opportunities to fall and hurt themselves, will be more fearless than an older person who has been banged up a bit. Women's gymnastics isn't really about strength, so age doesn't help you. Whereas in other sports, men's gymnastics even, the stronger you are, the better you probably will be, and the older you are, the stronger you tend to be.

Re:Minimum Age

There's a minimum age because FIG (Federation Internationale de Gymnastique) implemented one in 1997:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_gymnastics [wikipedia.org]

Why? Well, it's not conclusive, but this article has some good reasons:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080817014559AAZVAvK [yahoo.com]

Re:Minimum Age

Youth is an advantage in gymnastics. Under-16 gymnasts from other countries (who are better than those that go to the Olympics) stay home and hope they'll have a shot next time around.

how long will the IOC keep a lid?

Easy, it depends on how many millions the chicoms pour into their private bank accounts. The IOC is the biggest joke in all of sports.

My question is

is this seen as a scandal the world over, or just in America? No doubt many in China will believe that the gov on this and ignore the evidence (even if the girls and their parents come forward and admit it as well). But Do many in EU, South America, Africa, Asia Minor, Japan, South Korea, oceana, etc see this as a pretty wicked scandel of both Chinese gov AND IOC?

I predict...

Nobody from the IOC is going to say a word about this before they've left China. It would be rather foolhardy to do otherwise.

-jcr

Losing credibility fast.

The IOC is going to lose a LOT of credibility over this (as if they have much left to begin with) if they don't do something about it soon.

I wouldn't even mind if they didn't award the gold to the American women. Let them keep the silver, but it needs to be stripped from the Chinese. This is only proof of one of them being underage, but from what I've been reading, it's starting to seem pretty certain that at least 3 of them are underage.

And if China was willing to cheat this blatantly in this event, it makes you wonder what might have been going on behind closed doors with the rest of their athletes.

Crap

Now I'm quite disturbed about the thoughts I was having about the Chinese gymnastics team. I wonder if I can bill my therapy to the local Chinese embassy. Or restaurant. Or maybe I'll just go eat Chinese... NO! NO! BAD!

Sigh. I blame the Chinese government for this.

Chinese years vs US years.

She's 16 in Chinese years, which is 14 is US years.

But Seriously

Who didn't assume the Chinese would "cheat to win" at least a few times in this Olympics? They want to dazzle the world and win as many medals as possible. One has to assume they'll resort to unsavory tactics as long as plausible deniability exists.

On another Olympics note, does anyone else think there have been an unusually high number of errors in the technical events this year? Perhaps I just wasn't watching that closely in previous years, but I thought there have been an inordinate number of falls (off balance beams), poor landings and other substantial technical failures by the competitors. We've had outstanding performances by the likes of Phelps and Bolt, but otherwise there's been a lot of sucking by these elite athletes.

Don't be evil

That's strange. Fortunately, we can click on "View as HTML" in the Google cache and see it. However, even though the Google search results indicate that He Kexin is listed in the spreadsheet, when you view Google's cached version, her name no longer appears.

So much for don't be evil...

Re:A big deal will get made

What war in Iraq?

Where the movie "Wag the dog" made a fake war to get the attention away from alleged sexual behavior of the president. "Wag the dog II" will be about the alleged sexual behavior of the president to get the attention away from war.

My, how times have changed.

Re:A solution

I say carbon date 'em!

Hand in your geek creds please. Carbon dating only works on dead things, and will only give you the time that has passed since the thing in question died.

Unless you're suggesting that some of the athletes were, in fact, undead.