Saturday, August 23, 2008

Proof? (China's cheating exposed online)

I apologise for scoffing at the suggestion that Chinese gymnast He Kexin's birthday was January 1st. I am now quite prepared to believe that this is indeed her real birthday. January 1st, 1994, that is. One full year too young to be eligible for these Olympics.

Hacker Stryde has found pretty conclusive evidence of this on the Internet. It's worth checking his follow-up posts, here, here, and here as well.

The documents Stryde has dug up (all through easily reproducible searches, although, as he reports, many of the documents are being pulled from the Net shortly after their exposure) appear to be cached copies of the registration lists of China's National Gymnastics Federation.

The evidence of cheating is pretty damning now. What's more, the clumsy attempt to conceal this evidence makes the powers-that-be here look even more guilty.

The IOC is completely gutless and impotent - but this thing is bigger than just the IOC now. China really needs to come clean on this, and SOON.


Supplement: 'Stryde' is presumably the Mike Walker mentioned in
this article from the Wall Street Jounal the other day.

He and his small army of commenters have turned up a welter of incriminating documents through their crafty Web researches, and the IOC has finally been shamed into launching an investigation (I wouldn't put any money on them finding anything amiss, though).

I've asked him if he has found - or could find - anything on the ages of the other female gymnasts, or of these divers.

No comments: