Chinese accused of Olympic fraud

SimpleSam06

Some interesting news coming down the wires, apparently the Chinese have been accused of falsifying the ages of their gymnasts, as one hacker has discovered.

Controversy over whether the gold medal-winning Chinese gymnast He Kexin is underage just won’t go away.

The latest challenge to the age of the tiny Olympian comes from a determined computer hacker who wended his way through a cyberspace maze to find Chinese official documents listing her date of birth.

The gymnast certainly doesn’t look as if she has reached the minimum competing age of 16. However China says her passport, issued in February, gives her birthday on January 1, 1992 and the International Olympic Committee has said that proof from her passport is good enough.

If incontrovertible evidence that Ms He is underage were to come to light that could allow Britain’s Beth Tweddle, from Cheshire, to edge up from fourth place to bronze medal position in the uneven bars. With the end of the Games just three days away, that now seems unlikely.

The latest unofficial investigation was carried out by computer enthusiast, whose site Stryde Hax revealed a detailed forensic search for Ms He’s age.

First he simply tried Google, only to find that an official listing by the Chinese sports administration that had given her age could no longer be accessed. Next he tried the Google cache, only to find that Ms He’s name had been removed.

So then he tried Chinese search engine Baidu. He noted: “Baidu lists TWO spreadsheets at sport.gov.cn with Kexin’s name. Not surprisingly, the new one discovered by Baidu has been deleted as well. Undeterred, Stryde Hax delved into the cache. And there he found He Kexin on two lists, both gave her date of birth as January 1, 1994 – making her 14 years and 220 days old and too young to compete at these Olympics if the list is correct.

The lists were compiled by the General Administration of Sport of China.

Ms He insists that she is of age. Asked by journalists about the debate, she said: “My real age is 16. I don’t care what other people say. I want other people to know that 16 is my real age.” Asked how she spent her 15th birthday, she paused and then said: “I was with my team. It was an ordinary day.”

Just nine months before the Olympics, the Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency gave Ms He’s age as 13. Officials have since dismissed that report saying Xinhua had never been given her age and had made a mistake.

Stryde Hax, who describes himself as a consultant with a security background, concludes: “Much of the coverage regarding Kexin’s age has only mentioned ‘allegations’ of fraud, and the IOC has ignored thematter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state … rise to a level of evidence higher than ‘allegation’.”

The controversy apparently arises because younger girls have a higher strength to body mass ratio than the mandated 16 year old minimum, and younger competitors are much more prone to serious injury. If proven true, the atheletes could be stripped of their medals and China forbidden from participating in Olympic gymnastics, as was North Korea for the same infraction.

This report is coupled with further information that Chinese judges refused to rank strong contestants in the Tae Kwon Do competitions if they were facing Chinese competitors next.

Wagon

Britian just wants a medal. Is Beth Tweedle attractive?

Sherifu

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2008/08/hack-olympics.html

Defenestrate

Wagon wrote: »

Is Beth Tweedy attractive?

Ah a man who sees to the crux of the matter! I'm afraid that the flexible Ms Tweddle suffers from a condition known on the street as 'Rabbit Teeth'. A pity to be sure.

fitz0

There are no words to describe my shock and outrage.

Wagon

Defenestrate wrote: »

Ah a man who sees to the crux of the matter! I'm afraid that the flexible Ms Tweddle suffers from a condition known on the street as 'Rabbit Teeth'. A pity to be sure.

Google Image search turned up the truth. Such a shame

Wagon

And there's NO ****ING WAY He Kexin is 16! She looks about 8! :eek:

Fratton Fred

Wagon wrote: »

Britian just wants a medal. Is Beth Tweedle attractive?

why, we've already got a load.

The boxers are complaining as well that Chinese boxers seem to score for punches that other boxers do not.

Dragan

Wagon wrote: »

And there's NO ****ING WAY He Kexin is 16! She looks about 8! :eek:

A lot of gymnasts appear young, a lot of it has to do with the basic genetics required to get to an Olympic level.

Besides, this type of thing has cropped up before in gymnastics.

ScumLord

I knew it, ya can't trust them damned commie bastards. They'll cheat at everything, everywhere, at all times.

SimpleSam06

Wagon wrote: »

Google Image search turned up the truth. Such a shame

While no doubt the mighty men of AH are well used to batting aside hordes of supermodels as they sashay down the street trying not to trip over their lads, I for one would hit that.

bluto63

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

While no doubt the mighty men of AH are well used to batting aside hordes of supermodels as they sashay down the street trying not to trip over their lads, I for one would hit that.

She would be pretty flexible alright...

Wagon

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

While no doubt the mighty men of AH are well used to batting aside hordes of supermodels as they sashay down the street trying not to trip over their lads, I for one would hit that.

Limitless possibilities! A suitable prize for manly men.

challengemaster

Since when is using google defined as 'hacking' ... :pac:

Steve_o

Down with this sort of thing...

Jigsaw

Wagon wrote: »

And there's NO ****ING WAY He Kexin is 16! She looks about 8! :eek:

I agree completely.

She looks like she's only a year or two off her ma's tit.

CDfm

i think the US swimmer guy should be dope tested. Waterford Glass the horse was and he was innocent and we lost our medal. spread the luv.

hunter164

Steve_o wrote: »

Down with this sort of thing...

Careful now.

zAbbo

CDfm wrote: »

i think the US swimmer guy should be dope tested. Waterford Glass the horse was and he was innocent and we lost our medal. spread the luv.

He's probably the most tested athelete at the games, he's just a freak of nature - half fish.

Phelps was an underage phenom as well.

NotMe

challengemaster wrote: »

Since when is using google defined as 'hacking' ... :pac:

He didn't just google. Anyone can google. :rolleyes: This pro hacker used the search engine CACHE to find info that had BEEN DELETED!!111eleven

FruitLover

challengemaster wrote: »

Since when is using google defined as 'hacking' ... :pac:

Since newspapers need snappy-sounding terminology to use in an otherwise boring article.

CDfm

Whoa - what about Michelle de Brun - never failed a test in competition. Irelands most sucessful Olympian ever and best athlete since Fionn Macool. Ostrasised by the press and shunned by the atlhletic community over being rat arsed drunk on a saturday morning.

Looking to the sports authorities for original joined up thinking is not new and will never happen.

Black Swan

Just looked at the overall gold medal count by nation (msn.com) and it was reported:
China 46
USA 29
Russia 16
Great Brit 17
.
.
.
The disproportionate number of gold medals won by the Chinese Olympic athletes was impressive indeed! Is this normal for the Olympic host country? Or just nations with large populations from which to draw competitors from?

CDfm

testing and enforcement is not uniform.

anyone who believes it is naive or just plain stupid:eek:

lets rehabilitate michelle and cian o'connor

metaoblivia

I posted a thread about this in Sports a few days ago.
I don't think anything will happen, no matter how much evidence they find. Age falsification in gymnastics has been going on for years and years now. Honestly, with the amount of gymnasts from the former Soviet Union and Romania who have come forward saying their ages were falsified, the results of every major competition since the late 1970s would have to be called into question.
And the governing body of gymnastics, the FIG, isn't exactly on top of things. They've only ever caught one nation falsifying ages. In 1992, North Korea was found to have falsified passports for one of their gymnast, Kim Gwang Suk. They claimed she was 15... three years in a row. She kept her medals and North Korea was banned from competition for the following year.

On a side note, He Kexin's head looks really disproportionate to the rest of her body.

fly_agaric

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

Just looked at the overall gold medal count by nation (msn.com) and it was reported:
China 46
USA 29
Russia 16
Great Brit 17
.
.
.
The disproportionate number of gold medals won by the Chinese Olympic athletes was impressive indeed! Is this normal for the Olympic host country? Or just nations with large populations from which to draw competitors from?

I think since Beijing was awarded the games the CCP pumped loadsa money into many olympic sports to ensure that they would hockey everyone else when it came to winning gold medals at "their" olympics...
Excluding population size (lots of populous countries haven't won anything) & willingness to cheat - money, effort, good organisation are the main factors imo.

The Gnome

this just in...