While watching the summer Olympics this year, I think we were all wondering the same thing, "Who's going to take home the gold?" My favorite part of the games are the gymnastics competitions. I love gymnastics and I am even on the high school team. I made sure that I did not miss one moment of gymnastics. But one thing really shocked. I think that everyone was noticing how young the Chinese gymnasts looked. It is a fact that most competitive gymnasts are rather petite, look at Shawn Johnson, but these gymnasts looked a little too young. The rules of the gymnastics portion of the Olympics states that you have to be sixteen or older. At this point, the world became suspicious. Most Chinese gymnasts are brought out of their homes at a very young age to be raised at Olympians. Something did not seem right with the whole situation. It really took the turn for the worst when one particular Chinese gymnast who looked about twelve, tied with Nastia Liukin, and ended up winning gold on bars. I don't think that that was fair. If in fact that gymnast was lying about her ages, Nastia should be awarded the gold for bars. How bad does it look when coaches have to lie to win the Olympics? It takes away the integrity of the games, and the sport. Something should be done to fix, whether it is doing some further investigation of the ages of those gymnasts or for future games, make sure that the games will be fair, and maybe do a little more research on the ages of the gymnasts competing for the gold.
3 comments:
Well, I think that if the girl is twelve and Nastia Lukin is 18 and the twelve year old can beat her, she should be allowed to compete and win. I have always thought that 16 as the age is a little too high. I agree that lying is not the best way to get there but if she was good enough at 12 to beat a 16 year old then in my opinion she was good enough to be in the games a little early.
I agree! The Olympics should represent unity and integrity, and if coaches and competetors lie about ages, the Olympics will become argumentative and the opposite of what its meant to be. I've also heard stories about Chinese kids who decide they don't want to train for the Olympics anymore but their parents and coaches refuse to let them quit. :(
I agree with Kate. Age shouldn't really matter. What matters is how good you are and the competition. Although, I think it's crazy that they would go train at a very young age. It kind of deprives them of their freedom of choice to do what they want to do in the future.
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