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A Land of Make-Believe

Who can forget Marion Jones? Seven years after she won gold medals in the Olympic games in Sydney, she was prosecuted by her own government for her role in an illegal steroids distribution ring. Sentenced to a jail term of six months for lying to federal prosecutors about her involvement, she is still currently in jail. After her admission of cheating she was stripped of every Olympic medal she ever won.

The reality of Jones's fate is not what I'm writing about today. I want to write about a land of make believe. Pretend for a moment that Jones went on to tell everyone that she cheated in the Olympics on film in a movie about her life. What if Jones went on to become a television reporter, and the mayor of her town gave a speech about her Olympic performance in which he bragged about her steroid use? And what if nobody cared? That would be a very interesting, very different world, wouldn't it?

We're Living In It

Consider for a moment the strange case of Chinese Olympic gymnast Yang Yun. Competing in the same games as Jones in Sydney, Yun won the bronze medal on the uneven bars. Soon thereafter, she was featured in a state sponsored documentary film, "Yang Yun: My Olympics". In this film she states that she competed as a 14-year-old at Sydney, two years underage. A confidential source forwarded me a copy of this film recently, and I have posted it at the Internet Archive. If Yang Yun's videotaped admission isn't enough, consider this jubilant speech still hosted (for now!) on the government web server sports.gov.cn. How old is this document? Annual copies have been saved by the Internet Archive dating back to 2002. The Google Translated version from 2002 is in agreement with the currently hosted version. This document is a transcript of a speech given 17 October 2000 by Fu Guoliang, the head of the Hunan Provincial Sports Bureau, to his colleagues. In addition to the automated translation, I've had this document inspected by multiple contacts who speak Chinese because of the translation subtlety I'm about to share with you.

体操运动员杨云实际年龄才１４岁，在悉尼初试身手，
就引起体操界的注目并夺得一枚铜牌，前程不可限量。

Gymnast Yang Yun's real age was only 14. She tried 
her hands in Sydney for the first time and attracted 
the attention of the gymnastic community by winning 
one bronze medal. Her future is limitless.

For those who are skeptical, please download this document straight from the government web server it's hosted on and translate it on your own. Google Translate and World Lingo do a pretty good job. The translation above is spot on: Guoliang is really saying real age, a differentiation one would not normally make. In fact, in the entire course of this speech, he never once uses the phrase "real age" when referring to the age of other gymnasts. Is it conspicuous that the phrase "real age" is used to qualify the age of a gymnast who competed under a government issued passport with a completely different birthday? Whether this distinction is made in order to emphasize that her actual age is different from the one on the passport she competed under, or in order to differentiate between the Chinese cultural traditions of "real age" vs. "virtual age", the point is clear: Yang Yun competed at fourteen years of age. How stunning is it that this is a point of pride to a government official?

In Plain Sight

Is this information a conspiracy? A big secret? Take a look at this message board listing posted by insiders within the Chinese gymnastics team:

这个时候是不是不太方便谈这些关于生日、年龄的事，
尤其是两大UB高手的，免得被间谍抓到把柄//

Talking about these birthday and age matters isn't 
too convenient right now, especially for the two 
big uneven bars aces [He Kexin and Yang Yilin], 
to avoid having (the information) grabbed by spies.

Certainly someone thinks there's still a need for secrecy. Personally, I'm no longer so sure. It may come as a shock that every 'revelation' in this entry was uncovered months ago by Diane Pucin. Her article received the same reception from the IOC as my blog: a cacophony of silence. Certainly Marion Jones needed to be concerned about 'spies'. However I believe the Chinese gymnastics team need fear no such threat of justice.

Which Reality?

Taking a look at the two different experiences of Jones and Yang, it's easy to conclude that a double standard is being applied. As Sally Jenkins so deftly points out, the IOC once barred Greek sprinter Ekaterina Thanou from competition simply for a pattern of doping offenses, despite her having tested negative for the Games. Given the documents above, does the Chinese government have a history of age falsification in gymnastics? Can a reasonable person conclude that there is a pattern? And if so, how do we explain the double standard?

One Standard

The answer, of course, is that the IOC is much smarter than we are. They are applying a single standard: What The Government Says Is True. The US government declared Jones a cheater, and the IOC applied their standard and stripped her medals. The Chinese government maintains that their gymnasts are of age, and the IOC again applied their standard and agreed. It seems that someone at the IOC is a fan of great literature, and is making an exercise of applying the classics: