The Chinese passport's trump the legal age that the kids parents entered for them in provincial tournaments, but you'd have to be a complete absolute moron to believe that the parents of 3 separate gymnists all accidentally forgot what year their kids were born in.
How are their parents entering them in tournaments? Don't Chinese parents of athletes pretty much give up custody of their chosen child to the Chinese sports machine? I thought Chinese gymnasts lived and trained year round in national training centers, with every activity being orchestrated by their coaches. You don't have a clue what you are talking about.
Their coaches must have forgotten or confused their age with someone else. See, I can make up stuff too.
Quack baseless claims of any type are usually quickly identifiable by claimants going directly to the media and court of public opinion and bypass official vetting, dispute resolution and arbitration systems already in place. True for quack medicine, quack science, quack get-rich-quick, quack religions. I agree with other posters, if US gymnastics and olympic committee felt they had a case they would file a complaint with the IOC. Chinese media says that the US claim of underage gymnasts was investigated by international gymnastics in April and China was cleared.
The IOC is very strict about cheating -- and there are systems in place to investigate age fraud like in Little League World series and overage players. As it is, if it is just talk and stirring up yellow media, American coaching behavior and US gymnastics and IOC not muzzling the Karoly's is quite unseeming. Unfortunately we've seen classless from other coaches in other events too -- the idiot Spanish basketball coach dissing Larry Brown in the 2004 Olympics comes to mind.
Until this is more than lowest class media garbage, its just a case of sour grapes, low class games-man-ship to demean and shake rival Chinese girls.
