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China named its Olympic women’s gymnastics team on Friday, and the inclusion of at least two athletes has further raised questions, widespread in the sport, about whether the host nation for the Beijing Games is using under-age competitors.



He Kexin is 16, the minimum age for Olympic eligibility, according to her passport.

Chinese officials responded immediately, providing The New York Times with copies of passports indicating that both athletes in question — He Kexin, a gold-medal favorite in the uneven parallel bars, and Jiang Yuyuan — are 16, the minimum age for Olympic eligibility since 1997.

Officials with the International Gymnastics Federation said that questions about He’s age had been raised by Chinese news media reports, USA Gymnastics and fans of the sport, but that Chinese authorities presented passport information to show that He is 16.

Online records listing Chinese gymnasts and their ages that were posted on official Web sites in China, along with ages given in the official Chinese news media, however, seem to contradict the passport information, indicating that He and Jiang may be as young as 14 — two years below the Olympic limit.

Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic all-around gymnastics champion at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, recently watched a competition video of He and other Chinese gymnasts on the uneven bars.

“The girls are so little, so young,” Retton said. Speaking of He, Retton rolled her eyes and laughed, saying, “They said she was 16, but I don’t know.”

An advantage for younger gymnasts is that they are lighter and, often, more fearless when they perform difficult maneuvers, said Nellie Kim, a five-time Olympic gold medalist for the former Soviet Union who is now the president of the women’s technical committee for the Swiss-based International Gymnastics Federation.

“It’s easier to do tricks,” Kim said. “And psychologically, I think they worry less.”

The women’s gymnastics competition at the Beijing Games, which begin Aug. 8, is expected to be a dramatic battle for the team gold medal between the United States and China. At the 2007 world championships, the Americans prevailed by 95-hundredths of a point.

On the uneven bars, He and Nastia Liukin of the United States are expected to challenge for the individual gold medal.

In Chinese newspaper profiles this year, He was listed as 14, too young for the Beijing Games.

The Times found two online records of official registration lists of Chinese gymnasts that list He’s birthday as Jan. 1, 1994, which would make her 14. A 2007 national registry of Chinese gymnasts — now blocked in China but viewable through Google cache — shows He’s age as “1994.1.1.”

Another registration list that is unblocked, dated Jan. 27, 2006, and regarding an “intercity” competition in Chengdu, China, also lists He’s birthday as Jan. 1, 1994. That date differs by two years from the birth date of Jan. 1, 1992, listed on He’s passport, which was issued Feb. 14, 2008.

There has been considerable talk about the ages of Chinese gymnasts on Web sites devoted to the sport. And there has been frequent editing of He’s Wikipedia entry, although it could not be determined by whom. One paragraph that discusses the controversy of her age kept disappearing and reappearing on He’s entry. As of Friday, a different version of the paragraph had been restored to the page.

The other gymnast, Jiang, is listed on her passport — issued March 2, 2006 — as having been born on Nov. 1, 1991, which would make her 16 and thus eligible to compete at the Beijing Games.

A different birth date, indicating Jiang is not yet 15, appears on a list of junior competitors from the Zhejiang Province sports administration. The list of athletes includes national identification card numbers into which birth dates are embedded. Jiang’s national card number as it appears on this list shows her birth date as Oct. 1, 1993, which indicates that she will turn 15 in the fall, and would thus be ineligible to compete in the Beijing Games.

Zhang Hongliang, an official with the Chinese gymnastics federation, said Friday that perhaps Chinese reporters and provincial sports authorities made mistakes in listing He’s and Jiang’s birth dates differently from the dates given on their passports.

“The two athletes have attended international sports competitions before, and I’m sure the information is correct,” Zhang said of the athletes’ passports.

The International Gymnastics Federation said it had contacted Chinese officials in May about the gymnasts’ ages after receiving inquiries from fans and reading newspaper accounts, including one in The China Daily, the country’s official English-language paper, stating that He was 14.

“We heard these rumors, and we immediately wrote to the Chinese gymnastics federation” about He, said André Gueisbuhler, the secretary general of the international federation. “They immediately sent a copy of the passport, showing the age, and everything is O.K. That’s all we can check.”

If someone provided proof that any gymnast was under age, or filed a formal complaint, Gueisbuhler said, he would be “quite happy to check and ask again.”

“As long as we have no official complaint, there is no reason to act, if we get a passport that obviously is in order,” he said.

Steve Penny, the president of USA Gymnastics, said he had asked Kim of the international federation about He’s age after receiving e-mail messages referring to newspaper accounts and comments made on blogs and in Internet chat rooms that said she was 14. But Penny said he was not really concerned.

“If they have valid passports, bring ’em on,” Penny said. “If they say they’re good, we’re going to beat them.

“You can’t worry about it. You do your job, and you expect other people are doing theirs and you expect it’s a fair field of play.”

Privately, some gymnastics officials said that even if other countries had real concerns about the Chinese, they might be reluctant to make accusations for fear of reprisals by judges at the Beijing Games.

If it is true that under-age gymnasts are competing, Kim said: “It’s a bad thing. It should not be acceptable.”

Yang Yun of China won individual and team bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and later said in an interview on state-run television that she had been 14 at the time of those Games. A Hunan Province sports administration report also said later that she had been 14 when she competed in Sydney.

Bela Karolyi, who coached Retton of the United States and Nadia Comaneci of Romania to their Olympic gold-medal triumphs, said the problem of under-age gymnasts had been around for years. Age is an easy thing to alter in an authoritarian country, he said, because the government has such strict control of official paperwork.

He recalled Kim Gwang Suk, a North Korean gymnast who showed up at the 1991 world championships with two missing front teeth. Karolyi, who said he thought Kim must have been younger than 11 at the time, and others contended that those front teeth had been baby teeth and that permanent teeth had not yet replaced them. Her coaches said she had lost them years before, during an accident on the uneven bars.

At those world championships, Kim was 4 feet 4 inches and about 62 pounds, and she claimed to be 16. At one point, the North Korean Gymnastics Federation listed her at 15 for three straight years; the federation was later barred from the 1993 world championships for falsifying ages.

“Oh, come on, she was just in diapers and everyone could see that, just like some of the Chinese girls are now,” Karolyi said. “If you look close, you can see they still have their baby teeth. Little tiny teeth!”

But it is not likely that anyone could prove that the Chinese gymnasts are under age, Karolyi said.

“It’s literally impossible,” he said. “The paperwork is changed just too good. In a country like that, they’re experts at it. Nothing new.”

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The age of a third Chinese gymnast is in doubt, making half of China's women's gymnastics team possibly too young to compete in the Olympics.

Yang Yilin was born Aug. 26, 1993, according to 2004, 2005 and 2006 registration lists previously posted on the General Administration of Sport of China's website.

Yang is a medal favourite in the all-around and uneven bars, but the previously listed birth date would make her 15 at the end of August, below the minimum age of 16.

Yang's birth date on the 2007 registration list, however, is stated as Aug. 26, 1992, making her eligible.

The ages of two other Chinese gymnasts are also in doubt: He Kexin, a gold-medal favourite on uneven bars, and Jiang Yuyuan.

International Gymnastics Federation secretary general Andrei Gueisbuhler said he was unable to comment on Yang's case without seeing written records.

"If I don't have written proof of something ... we have to take for granted the passports that we've seen and have been checked by the IOC are OK," Gueisbuhler said.

Officials with the Chinese Gymnastics Association say that they have applied for passports for all of the athletes, and that photocopies of He and Jiang's passports, issued in July 2007 and March 2006, indicate they are both over 16.

"The International Gymnastics Federation strictly verified their passports and confirmed that their ages met the age rules for participating in the world championship, World Cup and Olympics," the association said in a statement.

The International Olympic Committee was in contact with the federation and Chinese officials regarding the age issue, IOC president Jacques Rogge said Saturday.

"The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes," Rogge said. "It's not the task of the IOC to check every one of the 10,000 athletes."

The all-around gold medal is expected to be a competition between two countries: the United States and China. Yang and He were expected to be big contributors for the Chinese, both having scored 17s on the uneven bars this season.

The only member of the American team to score a 17 is Nastia Liukin.

In the gymnastics team finals, three team members compete in each event and all three scores count towards the total.

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BEIJING -- They look like they are anywhere between 8 and 11 years old, but five of the six girls on the Chinese gymnastics team hold passports that say they are 16 -- the minimum age to be competing in the Olympic gymnastics competition.

In a sport where youth means flexibility -- and flexibility means everything -- many people in the gymnastics world are questioning just how old these girls really are.

"It's really bigger than gymnastics," began Carol-Angela Orchard, who coaches Canadian gymnast Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs. For the record, she is one of few coaches here who is not accusing the Chinese of cheating, heading into Wednesday's team competition.

"I can't go to the Canadian government and say, 'Please give me passport for Elyse that will allow her to compete at the Olympic Games [before she is of age]. That simply can not happen," Orchard said. "So, if it's a passport that the government supplies; if they have documentation from their government that says that is their age, then that's their age."

Bela Karolyi, former coach to Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, now coaches the pixies of the United States team. He spoke out last week about the Chinese.

"This is a joke," he said. "We are people who have had children of our own, so we know what a 16-year-old should look like. They should not look like they are seven and maybe still in diapers."

The New York Times reported irregularities in the ages of the Chinese gymnasts last month, finding online records that showed two gymnasts, He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan, may only be 14. The state-run Chinese Central Television website also posted a profile of Yang Yilin indicating she too was 14, the Times reported.

In turn, the Chinese have produced documentation which satisfies the International Olympic Committee, a fact that does not surprise Canadian coach Tony Smith at all.

"[False documentation] was pretty [common] among all the Eastern Bloc countries, when the Communists were running the show," Smith said, a fact of which the Romanian Karolyi is no doubt well aware. "It's the mentality that, through sport, we're going to demonstrate our superiority over the non-Communist nations. It's been around a long time. Unfortunately we don't get to play by the same rules.

"It's no different than the whole drug testing thing," he said, referring to countries that stringently test for drugs only to make sure their athletes show up clean for competitions. "Whereas in Canada we say, 'You tested positive? See ya later.' "

The crux of the problem lies in the fact that the only way for the IOC to verify an athlete's age is by passport or birth certificate -- both government-issued documents.

"It's impossible," Smith said. "It's all speculation, but some of those kids, they barely look 12, 13, years old. There are a few of them that are legitimately older than 16. Yet every now and then you see the phenomenon coming up, then all of the sudden she's old enough to compete."

Karolyi is adamant that some of these girls are too young. "What the Chinese are doing is a slap in the face of the whole world, but there is nothing we can do about it."

The Chinese gymnastics federation (FIG) issued a statement last week claiming the matter was cleared up.

"The FIG has received confirmation from the International Olympic Committee that all passports are valid for all gymnasts competing in the Beijing Olympic Games," they said in a statement. "Stringent control measures are taken at the time of athlete accreditation for all official FIG competitions. Further, all athlete ages for the Beijing Olympic Games are consistent with the FIG records for all past FIG competitions."

The Canadian women's team has been in a practice group with the Chinese during the Olympic competition. "Those girls I see at the gym look eligible to me," Orchard said. "They are magnificent gymnasts. I could sit there all day and watch them.

"Their physique is even smaller than the typical North American child, so it is [exacerbated] even more. They are the best in the world, especially on bars and beam, but they are just tinier people."

In fact, the minimum age in Olympic gymnastics has been raised from 14 to 15, to 16 over the years, as those outside the sport grew concerned with the work regimen demanded of 12-and 13-year-olds in preparation for the Games.

"It's difficult to understand our sport. The physique is so different," Orchard said. "To my mind, 15 is the perfect age.

"In this sport, we do select very tiny packages. Even in Canada you have girls where you go, 'Oh my God. They look like they're only 10.' They're 15."