Thursday, August 14, 2008

Confucius Say: Winners Never Cheat and Cheaters Never Win

Okay, so maybe Confucius didn't say that and maybe that saying is about quitters and not cheaters but the same logic applies. I am referring to the clearly underage gymnasts from China. Do they think that we believe that this girl is 16 years old? She's missing a tooth. She weighs 68 pounds. And what about the news service article from November that indicated another Chinese gymnast was only 13? She's suddenly 16 too. They are cheating. Cheating! Don't get me wrong, as much as I love the US team, they truly turned in a silver medal performance. But would they have beaten the Chinese team if they didn't have underage athletes? I guess we'll never know. I realize that China is a communist country and that these poor girls are taken away from their families as children and put through a machine meant to churn out world-class athletes but does a gold medal mean the same thing if you won it by cheating? And this is scary cheating. This is institutional cheating which involved government falsification of passport documents. That totally goes against the spirit of the Olympics and it makes me angry. And it makes me angry that the IOC is not looking into this further in fear of offending their hosts. What is to stop other countries from trying the same thing? Way to go China. First fake fireworks. Then having a cute girl lip sync to the less cute girl's singing. Now this. What's next? A Chinese swimmer wearing scuba fins? Hey--as long as he has a document stating that those, in fact, are his feet...