FIG Investigating Yang, Dong

If it was found that these two 2000 Olympians were underage, would the US women's team be given the bronze medal?

I agree with this statement. The China's team need to be punished like N.Korea

I would feel very badly for the Chinese girls (NOT for the federation) if their medals were stripped. I'm only hoping that the end result of all this mess is that the FIG finally admits to the world that the age limit is unenforceable and therefore unfair.

I can't see the gymnasts being stripped of medals from 8 years ago, there would hardly be any point. The only time any gymnast was found guilty of age falsification the team was banned from the next worlds, but the Kim Gwang Suk was allowed to keep her gold medal.

And the media coverage at this Olympics wasn't widespread about it, it was only NBC.

I agree, postell08. I hope situations like this will cause the FIG to abolish the age limit. It was intended to prevent young gymnasts from burning out too soon. I don't think there's anyone out there who believes that young gymnasts have trained less hard since the age limit was introduced (quite the contrary, I'd say), so the FIG might as well abolish the limit and be done with all these scandals. If fourteen-year-old swimmers and divers may take part in senior competitions, why not fourteen-year-old gymnasts? It's not fair...

Ridiculous. If the Chinese are stripped of their medals, then many other underage gymnasts (Bicherova, Silivas, Dobre, Popa, Mostepanova, etc.) should share the same fate.

Better yet, do away with the minimum age requirement entirely.

I think the age minimum is VERY fair. if there wasn't one, we would eventually have a bunch of 12 year olds at the olympics. i agree it would be terrible if their medals were taken away, but if they did cheat, the people who missed out deserve the medals more.

COME ON!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!
Once again with the age issue...
I'm sick of it!!!!!

Giving the gold to USA when they don't deserve it??!!!
WTF!!
they should clear up that mess months before the Olympics.. not now...


stop crying!!!!!!

And so who's the next target: Marinescu? Gogean? Silivas? Bicherova? The FIG needs to be very careful about how they approach this. Opening a whole can of worms is not going to be beneficial to the sport in the long run.

I'm hoping that the Chinese get their medals stripped. I think the USA rightfully won the Olympic Team title in Beijing and China should have gotten the silver. It's about time someone was made an example of the age cheating and strip them of their medals. Too bad it has to be the Chinese. I hope that China will learn to make sure their gymnasts look like their at the right age despite their athletes looking young at the 2008 Olympics. Also can't wait till the FIG does something about the age cheating done by China and other nations.

The 2007 interview mentioned in this article, in which Yang Yun admits to having been 14 at the time of the 2000 Olympics, has recently been translated into English and is available online. It was only just released this past Monday - I was responsible for producing and editing the English translation. If you're interested in viewing it, you can see it on my website at www.HeatherShow.com or on YouTube at www.YouTube.com/HeatherShowDotCom

If China should get any punishment at all, it should be the same as was given to North Korea: banning from competition for some length of time rather than stripping athletes of medals. Kim Gwang Suk got to keep her gold medal from 1991. BUT -- I don't think there should be any sort of punishment. And why is the FIG worried about losing its credibility? It lost it long ago.

i think the age limit should be kept in place. though it is hard to reinforce, that does not mean that the principle behind it is wrong. how can anyone say that it is just to take children out of their homes and work them like dogs for the purpose of creating champions? how can a society that, because of economic hardship, encourages parents to give their children up to this, be considered just? have you seen these 5 year olds being jammed down into an oversplit by a coach, all the while bawling their eyes out? gymnasts can be trained in a healthy manner and still achieve elite greatness.

Personally I think there is a lot of hypocrisy in all this from all sides. While I think people should be held accountable for rule breaking I think it's ridiculous for the FIG to be "expanding" their investigation to include Yang and Dong. It looks more like a PR move to help them save face.

As it has been stated earlier if you investigate them you have to investigate all the other girls from the past 30 years. And the FIG wont since they simply don't have the resources or time to do it.

The reality is they wouldn't even be spending so much time invested in the 2008 team except for all the ranting of the US media led by the rants of the Karolyis.

As so pointedly mentioned by our own IG magazine, why didn't anyone say anything last year at the world championships? Why? Because the US won it and the event was not televised at all in the US. They wouldn't even be bothering if the US girls had won the gold medal in Beijing under a live telecast that was seen by the whole world. Marta Karolyi's status and rep at effectively producing a gold winning team is greatly at stake.

NBC took every opportunity to give the Karolyis their spotlight to rant and say insulting things about the chinese team. They never once bother to give even the appearance of balanced reporting.

An example of this: they never mentioned Marta Karolyi's pointed accusation to the press that the chinese delegation deliberately sabotaged Alicia's beam performance. It took a rep from US gymnastics to refute her accusation. Yet Tim Daggett didn't mention it. Bob Costas didn't address it during any of his sessions with Bela. If that was mentioned, do you think there would be as much support for an investigation?

Now I have always been behind the age limit but it is clear the FIG cannot effectively enforce it. They need to rethink the issue and resolve it for the future. Really that's all they can do.

I think it would be difficult to retrospectively strip the medals of a few gymnasts because there are sooo many gymnasts guilty of competing underage. (The ones who openly said it are just asking for trouble though and should not be surprised if their medals get taken away.)
I think FIG should admit they have not been able to control the age limit so far and then decide whether they want to get rid of it altogether or whether they can enforce it in some way.
It's true that it's unfair that gymnastics has an age limit if other sports don't but we also don't want this to become a children's sport. Several women (Chusovitina, Khorkina, Hatch, Bhardwai and others) have shown they can be better gymnasts in their twenties than teens. I think others can as well but there are many logistic problems that the age limit does not address. For one, at the age of eighteen, many women do the NCAAs which (unlike the men's NCAAs) are an entirely different level from elite and are difficult to come back from. (Only one gymnast has managed it so far...with the help of a famous actress.) Two, it's difficult for gymnasts to support themselves (unless they are able to win a bunch of prizes). Three, the equipment is adjustable, but not enough to work well for female gymnasts significantly over five feet.
So, if the FIG wants older gymnasts, a lot of other things than the age limit would have to be adjusted.

If the FIG takes any action against these gymnasts, won't it mean going right back through the history books and verifying the ages of all medalling gymnasts? Remember that many Romanians have admitted that they competed under age, and there are one or two Soviets who are also well known as having competed under age at world championships.
So the history books would have to be completely rewritten. Bicherova wouldn't be world champion in 1981 and the Soviets would lose their team gold. The Romanians would lose out too - probably as the worst losers during the mid 1980s and the 1990s when so many of their gymnasts have admitted to competing under age. How about the contributions of Gogean and Silivas to their teams in 1985 and 1992? And who's to say that, for example, the East German teams at some of these competitions weren't either under age (eg Dagmar Kersten) or taking diuretics at the time?
Yet these were fantastics gymnasts, and wonderful teams who are iconic in the sport, and a role model for future generations. Losing them as world and Olympic champions would leave the sport poorer. And the gymnasts themselves can't be blamed for something they could not possibly have conceived and executed alone at such an age. How many 13 and 14 year olds do you know who would be able to hoodwink coaches they had worked with probably for their whole lives that they were a year or two older than they were last year, and persuade the right people to change vital documentation including passports and identity cards that are issued at a national level? Isn't this something that criminals, terrorists and corrupt civil servants normally arrange? Would you know how to buy a false identity for yourself?
At the heart of this is essentially the abuse of young talent by ambitious adults - the same kind of ambitious adults who are reputed to push gymnasts to breaking point - this is the problem. And while the age limit was introduced to minimise this possibility, it's clearly open to abuse by those coaches willing, or desperate enough, to go far and break the law.

The FIG should announce that they are aware of multiple violations of the age code. And introduce new systems to track competitor details in future, in an attempt to discourage future violations. If they make any further announcements, name names or change medal tables, it will essentially destroy gymnastics' heritage. Perhaps better would be to acknowledge the problems but create a legend of gymnastics' tiny heroes of the past.

It's all a bit of a moot point anyway - there wasn't even an age limit when Comaneci won the Olympics at the age of 14.

Come on....
In 1996, Moceanu was only 14 years old... no ruls about age, no limits... but she was 14....
In 1976, Nadia was 14....no rules, no limits....
Bela speaks too much and he doesn't realise that those girls were coached by him and were at the olympics at only 14....
And all that because USA didn't win the team gold meal.... are you kidding....
How can people decide to ask to those youg athletes, who trained really hard, to give back their medals because their country made (or not... we don't know for the moment) a mistake....
And for the US team, receving a team gold medal has no more sense because everybody will remember the Chinese team on the 1st place of the podium....
If China cheated, the country has to be banned for the next world championship, only to let them know that rules are rules...
It would be fear for everybody.

Actually I believe Moceanu had to be 15 in 1996.

But more importantly, she at the time, was actually smaller than some of the chinese girls in question. While Nadia at 5'1" looked 14, how many people would believe Moceanu was a teenager at the time if they didn't know who she was? Let's be honest, she would have been lucky to pass for 12

what is the matter with most of you? you are okay with all these countries cheating? im just glad the FIG is FINALLY doing something about it.

Some people have brought up an excellent point that it would be better to punish China through a competition ban rather than punish the athletes (who really had no choice in the matter) by taking away their medals. By the time the ban is over, their current "sixteen-year-olds" might actually turn sixteen. Although there have been past offenders, the Soviet Union has dissolved and Romania is no longer a communist country. The only country that is a perpetual offender since the latest age limit is China (and it has no intention to curb its kiddie mills).

Obviously, athletes in all sports have to start young and work hard. All athletes have to push themselves to the edge of their abilities to reach their full potential, but, unlike in gymnastics, they are asked to give their peak performance in adulthood. If athletes like Michael Phelps or Lance Armstrong go through a grueling training regimen and all sorts of dietary bizarreness, it is considered admirable because they are adults and they have chosen to do this. In gymnastics, there is always a sense of shame about sacrifices for the sport because the athletes (esp women) are so young and this may be forced upon them. Sure, they may say they have chosen to train this way but then you have child-athletes like Moceanu complain of being abused by not being allowed to eat candy and you wonder how much they understand. As adults, gymnasts (just like other athletes) can choose whether they want a tough or a TLC coach, whether they to suffer to reach their full potential or be just an average happy-go-lucky athlete. Obviously, enforcing the age limit just scratches the surface of the iceberg but it is probably a step in the right direction.

Rules require consequences. If a gymnast was under the required age limit at a competition, then her results should be voided, including stripping any medals. Enforcing direct consequences for cheating is the only way to motivate everyone to play by the rules. Unfortunately, age violations often surface long after a competition, but they should still be taken seriously and addressed. A statute of limitations seems reasonable, maybe around 10 years (?)

Any one breaking the rules of the game should be panalized period! No matter how long it takes to investigate and find the facts.

I have been following Gymnastics for ober 25 yrs and it seems that International Non American Gymnast break the rules everytime!We Don't dare try to cheat we have always played fair to there dishonesty. We are winning gold because we are doing it right there is so much pride in our country in the sport of Gymnastics ! I would love to see the Chinese loos there gold and it go right to the Americans. China should be ashamed to think that they could allow something like this in there country when the Olympic Games are being held there ...sorry no pride there just greed and winning ..by breaking all the rules. I saw the tears in some of those girls faces when they won the gold medal ....they will cry once again because of the lose ...all due to the fault of the coaches and there country. No there fault...it's a shame.

It would be a shame if the investigation found that there was age falsification for Yang Yun because she was one beautiful gymnast all-around gymnast in Sydney. I still found her floor routine from Sydney to be one of the best ever from a Chinese gymnast.