China to Scrutinize Athletes' Ages Following Olympic Embarrassment

Published November 20, 2014

Following the embarrassment of having its 2000 women’s Olympic gymnastics team stripped of a bronze medal after an investigation found one of its athletes was underage, China doesn’t want to take any chances in the lead-up to next month’s Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.

“We’ve scrutinized every athlete’s age in the delegation for the Youth Olympic Games to make sure there is no one going to Singapore with a fake age,” Cai Zhenhua, vice president of the State General Administration of Sport, was quoted as saying Thursday by the state-run China Daily.

China takes its quest for Olympic gold seriously. Many Chinese view success in international athletics as a symbol of the country’s economic rise. China topped the standings in the 2008 Beijing games with 51 gold medals, 15 more than its closest competitor, the U.S. Still, for China’s critics, the gymnastics scandal symbolized deep-rooted government corruption. The Chinese government has denied involvement in falsifying the age of the gymnast, Dong Fangxiao, who investigators concluded was only 14 during Sydney’s Olympic Games.

Judging from Internet comments, the Chinese public was divided on the fairness of the move to strip Dong of her medal, with some saying it exposed problematic sports practices in China, while others called it an overreaction.

The China Daily report stressed that officials examined six forms of identification for each athlete in the delegation for Singapore, including birth certificates, ID cards, passports and domestic athlete registration cards, as well as domestic and international authentication for competitions.

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