BEIJING — Do not send China dolls to do a woman’s work.
In an Olympic gymnastics competition that felt like a morality play, 18-year-old American gymnast Nastia Liukin won the all-around championship, beating back the challenge from doll-faced, reed-thin Chinese girls accused of being shoved into the Summer Games as underage competitors.
While it’s always dangerous to cast sports as a battle of right versus wrong, there is peace of mind knowing Liukin, who looks like an adult with the right to vote for president, is not too far over the hill to be an Olympic champion.
Is bronze really worth cheating for? As the third-place medal was draped around the neck of China’s 77-pound Yang Yilin, the sight gave off some of the same creepy vibe as watching old video footage of the late JonBenet Ramsey in full makeup at a beauty pageant.
If steroids once turned sprinter Ben Johnson from the world’s fastest human into the target of worldwide scorn, then isn’t lying about your age also a crime against Olympic ideals?
The age of Yang, who finished behind Liukin and American Shawn Johnson in the final scores, demands a thorough investigation by the International Olympic Committee.
There’s a real ick factor in asking a prepubescent gymnast to endure the physical and mental strain of sticking a landing while carrying the burden of national pride on her shoulders at the same time.
We coo at gymnasts as cute pixies. But the showcase event of the Summer Games too often turned little girls into circus sideshow freaks. To end that unseemly image, in 1996 the Games adopted a rule requiring athletes to be at least 16 years old.
And the gymnastics world is still screaming in protest.
“I was 14 when I won gold,” said Nadia Comaneci, a perfect 10 at the 1976 Montreal Games. “Thirty-two years ago, it was OK. So now we’re going backwards?”
But angry, vocal American reps, including Bela Karolyi, have been insulted by the mounting evidence both of China’s entrants in the individual all-around, the 70-pound Jiang Yuyuan and the 4-foot-11 Yang, failed to meet the minimum age requirement.
“They are using half-people,” decried Karolyi, slamming China’s “cynical” need to turn its gymnastics program into a sweatshop of child labor.
How could the host nation of the Summer Games be so crass as to fudge the ages of athletes on display for more than a billion eyes around the world? Like almost everything in China, the answer is more complex to an outsider.
For generations of Chinese, particularly in rural areas where infant mortality rates were often high, it long has been common practice to view life as beginning on a baby’s first birthday.
The age listed on a passport, unquestioned by the Olympics’ governing body as official, has been just another negotiable statistic on paperwork in a Chinese bureaucracy rife with influence peddling.
“You fill out the form for a passport and put down whatever age you want,” said Colorado businessman Merv Lapin, a veteran of 50 trips to China. While serving as a coach for young athletes, he has dealt extensively with the country’s sports policies.
But what really bugs us is what can make you want to take a shower after seeing how small and fragile these girls really look in person. It’s not the physical health or psychological well-being of Chinese gymnasts that causes Karolyi indignation, but the fact the USA could not get away with the same competitive advantage.
And that’s sick.
“I think if the results had been different for the United States, there wouldn’t be any problem about the ages,” said Comaneci, who thought it was unsportsmanlike to accuse China of cheating after the U.S. team stumbled to second place in the earlier team competition at the Games. “You have to know how to win and how to lose.”
Liukin showed the world that a grown woman from the USA knows how to win.
“I can’t believe it still. I worked so hard for so many years for this,” she said.
If Olympic ideals mean anything, now we find out if gymnastics has the stomach to not only find out the truth about underage performers but do something about it.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
