Gymnast age controversy not a big deal

Jessica E. Davis is a guest columnist to For Pete's Sake Online. She recently returned from five months aboard in Asia, including more than one month in China. She is a reporter for City News Service in San Diego, Calif.

The girls on China's gymnastics team may not be as young as you think.

Two media sources and one hacker have apparently discovered discrepancies in the reporting of the girls' ages on the Internet:

• A New York Times article three weeks ago raised initial suspicions about the underage gymnasts. The Times reported that even though He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan are listed as 16 on their passports other sources state otherwise.
• The Associated Press also found evidence on a Chinese state media Web site identifying He as 13 only nine months before the games.
• A blogger apparently discovered on a Chinese sponsored state Web site Wednesday that several of the Chinese gymnasts are under the Olympic age limit.

Two points I would like make:

• The criticism has mainly come from western media.
• The proof has come from online sources.

The United States may be making an embarrassing mistake; the same mistake I made four months ago.

I often questioned the ages of women I saw in China while I studied abroad in Asia for five months at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I often mistook my classmates as high school or grade school students. I believe Asian women hide their age better than Caucasian women.

I traveled to Shantou in Southern China to teach English in March. I knew I was supposed to teach high school students, but they seemed like eight year olds instead of 16 and 17 year olds.

I asked one young girl, "How old are you?" She thought for a moment and said, "18." I had thought she was closer to 10.

The more time I spent in China, the more I realized that Chinese women show age differently, mainly on their necks and hands.

Before U.S. media condemn the Chinese, maybe they should step back and make sure they are not making the same mistake I did.

You can read more about Jessica's travels in Asia in her blog at http://reportingfromasia.blogspot.com.

Questions? Comments? E-mail Jessica at jdavis08@gmail.com.

Golden moment for Federer

Roger Federer is leaving Beijing with gold.

It wasn’t the gold medal that was expected of the most dominant tennis player in the world, but in the midst of a frustrating year it’s an important milestone.

“Sort of a dream-come-true moment,” Federer said. “Maybe it comes around once in a lifetime. It’s almost disbelief, to some degree.”

Disbelief has set in now that Federer’s Grand Slam total is stalled at 12 and his 4½-year reign atop the ATP Tour rankings just ended. French champion, Wimbledon champion and now Olympic champion Rafael Nadal completed his ascension to the world No. 1 ranking.

After all, Nadal showed an unrelenting determination in July stopping Federer from winning a sixth straight Wimbledon title, ending his 40-match winning streak at the All England Club. Soon after, many columnists started to question what’s wrong with Roger, questions that reemerged with fervor after his Olympic quarterfinal loss.

Federer has been venerable this year, no doubt about it. But, SI’s Jon Wertheim brought up a good point; a lot of players ranked No. 2 still win majors. There's still one major left and Roger is showing championship mettle.

Finally in 2008, Federer was able to celebrate a big victory. He had some help from countryman Stanislas Wawrinka in toppling Simon Aspelin and Tomas Johansson of Sweden 6-3, 6-4, 6-7 (4), 6-3.

But for the first time in three Olympics, Federer is a medalist, standing atop the podium.

That’s something for the Swiss to smile about.

NBC wins the gold

One week into the 2008 Summer Olympics and the biggest winner out the water may be NBC Universal.

After paying $900 million for the rights to broadcast the summer games, NBC’s primetime ratings have been huge and the online coverage just as strong. Nearly 25 million people have visited NBCOlympics.com, viewing 456 million pages. After the amazing U.S. comeback in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay, people watched the video replay 1.7 million times.

Part of NBC’s primetime success can be attributed to the Phelps-effect. That’s right U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps has been the story of the Beijing games. What else can be said about him, Phelps is a human-performance machine.

The quest for golden history nearly ended in Phelps' second race, but teammate Jason Lezak turned in an epic performance to edge the French. Then chasing Mark Spitz’s record seven golds Phelps delivered in a legendary way.

While Phelps has been so dominant in the water, the U.S. women’s team was anything but. Katie Hoff had high Olympic hopes and was expected to pull in six medals (most ever for a female swimmer). Instead of achieving greatness, Hoff earned just three medals – one silver and two bronze.

After watching her swim, I think there was something wrong with Hoff. She faded down the stretch of nearly every race and ended up huffing for air after hitting the wall. On top of that she did not look surprised by her results. Swimming slower than her personal bests in four of five individual events, Hoff was a disappointment. Speaking of pool disappointments, what happened to Athens gold medalist Amanda Beard?

Yahoo’s Fourth-Place Medal Blog has been tackling the many mysteries of the Olympics. Staying in the Water Cube, they addressed one of the most perplexing aspects of diving. Why do divers head to the showers right after completing a dive? Fascinating answer, and it’s not to wash off the chlorine. Fourth-Place Medal also uncovered the identity of the gorgeous athlete from Paraguay, among other Olympic mysteries.

And with gorgeous mostly young athletes in top physical shape, the close quarters of the Olympic Village appears to be full of love. Olympic organizers are providing 100,000 condoms for these games, as they have distributed condoms since Barcelona in 1992. Greg Boeck examines if there’s any harm in that.

One final thought about the starlet of the Opening Ceremony, Lin Miaoke. If you actually thought the Chinese government would let a 7-year-old sing “Ode to the Motherland” live in front of 91,000 people and a worldwide TV audience, you’re a fool. It comes as no surprise here, that Lin lip-synched the song. I feel sorry for Yang Peiyi who’s crooked teeth disqualified her. But the Olympics are part of China’s coming out party, they are striving for perfection be it taped or not.

Enjoy the games!

Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Let the games begin!

The world witnessed stunning precision, size, scale and profuse color as China opened the 29th Olympics games. An epic display covering 6,000-years of history demonstrated that the new China intends to be a global player.

The Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics tend to drag on and can border on bizarre like Yoko Ono singing in Torino or monster trucks showing up in Atlanta. But, Beijing’s show was a thrilling artistic display incorporating a human pyramid, synchronized drummers, levitating dancers and an athlete running on air to light the Olympic torch.

Plus the firework display was phenomenal. It’s fitting that a Chinese invention would be celebrated throughout the evening, filling the skies of Beijing. As the golden footprints marched toward the Bird’s Nest, this Olympiad is undeniably China’s.

This should be a spectacular show.

Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images. And for more images from the Opening Ceremonies head to NBCOlympics.com.

A 'Wie' little mistake

We’ve reached another weekend of golf and there’s no sign of phenom Michelle Wie.

Wie failed for the eighth time to advance past the opening rounds of a PGA Tour event at the Legends Reno Tahoe-Open Friday. She shot a second round 80, which included a quintuple-bogey 9, missing the cut with a 9-over par 153.

This latest tourney letdown came days after Wie had to deal with an embarrassing disqualification at the LPGA State Farm Classic. Just one shot off the lead, LPGA officials discovered she had left the scoring area without signing her card garnering an automatic dismissal.

Michelle has the raw skill to compete at a championship level, but there’s another more important aspect of her game that’s lacking. Wie’s mental makeup is disparaging.

She continues to make poor choice after poor choice on the golf course. If that continues, Wie won’t crack into the top tier of LPGA Tour.

Wie often says she’s a “work in progress” and maintains an optimism that she can turn things around.

“I think if I played a couple (PGA events) in a row, it would be a different story,” Wie said. “It’s just hard to play one and then one maybe a year later. I think if I played eight in a row and I missed all eight, that would be a different story.”

The benefit of the doubt for Wie is quickly fading. Soon the only story about Michelle Wie will be that she is a non-story.