Olympics: Chinese 12-yr old women gymnasts

it pisses me off how nbc is all like "some people think the chinese team has a bunch of underage girls, but we should just take their word for it. i mean, obviously the ioc has decided not to do anything and i don't think nbc should go on and on about it, but they act like only crazy people think there's anything amiss.

therefore, i loved bela karolyi last night, who said something like "the chinese did a wonderful job, too bad half their team is underage and shouldn't be in olympic games."

on the other hand, cheng fei (sp?), the leader of the chinese team, is definitely of age and looks like jengis khan. love her.

i can't get too worked up about the fireworks thing. they DID say on air (apparently) that the TV feed was a mock-up for the sake of not knocking TV helicopters out of the air. and they also really did it, it just that the tv transmission was a mock-up.

the joey cheek thing, on the other hand, total bullshit.

Not sour grapes to me.. there's no doubt that those girls were under age. Not the first time it's happened. from NYT:

China is not the first team to be in this position. In 1991, a North Korean gymnast, Kim Gwang Suk, showed up at the world championships with two missing front teeth, raising questions about her age. She 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; it was later barred from the 1993 world championships for falsifying ages.

sweet tea wrote:
the competition was a pleasure to watch in any case, especially the amount of fun the chinese team had on their floor exercises when it was clear that they basically couldn't lose.

If Sacramone doesn't fall twice and step out of bounds, the USA may have won. I give her credit for not making excuses:

"Sacramone, who is 20 and the oldest of all the female Chinese and American gymnasts competing, said she thought her competitors for China did not look 16.

“No, they looked pretty young,” said Sacramone, who is listed at 5-1 and 117 pounds. “But I’m not one to judge. I don’t look 20.”

i thought both teams showed a lot of class, china celebrating but not gloating, everyone seeming to genuinely congratulate each other in the end.

both teams made errors, because what they're doing is REALLY HARD, physically and mentally. i'm sure everyone competing knows what its like to fall a couple of times. this bit from shawn johnson shows that:

Several rooms away, Sacramone was confronting her own issues. She wondered why she had made crucial mistakes. Still shaken, she was surrounded by teammates trying to console her.

Johnson took her aside and said, “Were you mad at me when I messed up at worlds last year?”

Sacramone said no.

Johnson said: “OK, well, we’re not mad at you. We all still love you.”

ETA: the chinese won by almost exactly the difference in the degree of difficulty points of the two teams' routines. so basically, they both messed up about the same amount, but china had slightly more points to play with. doesn't seem to me that the us team should be ashamed of that.

costas hasn't bugged me that much, but the nitwit they've got asking the swimmers questions after the races is amazingly vapid. and the gymnastics commentary in general is just dumb. every other line was a recapitulation of "three up, three count" which is not, when it comes right down to it, a tricky concept to grasp. and i really wish they'd shown some of the other teams, at least a little.

i do like the somewhat harsh and hilariously heterosexual woman commenting on the diving. she's great. she explains things clearly, and points out the faults precisely, if without the usual sugar coating. and she canNOTstop talking about how pretty the male divers are. (they are -- even i can see that -- but it's still funny.)

love the little segments mary castillo does every night -- i don't remember her from past games, but she's terrific.

I haven't watched all the events but most of the announcers I've heard and Costas are horrible (I was even forced to feel sympathy for GW Bush during Costas's attempt to play Mike Wallace/Tim Russert, which made me feel dirty and I'll never forgive Costas for that). The soccer/football announcers have at least approximated objectivity. I detest "rooting for the home team" even though NBC paid dearly for the right to do so.

Well the American ladies redeemed themselves Nastia Liukin won the gold medal and Shawn Johnson won the silver in the individual all-around competition last night. Go USA!

did anyone notice how it actually said on the little footer of the screen that one of those chinese girls was fifteen? To be exact, it was her name and "Age: 15"
Is that allowed?

i think all the girls were good.
No the chinese girls weren't 16, you could tell they still hadd their baby teeth. I think Nastia should've won. America was much better..