Thursday, September 25, 2008
The controversial issue of age at the 2008 Olympics
I don't know if its true or not but when I saw some of those girls China had doing the gymnastics, I told myself there is no way they are 16 years old. Im sure China wasn't the only ones bringing in young girls to compete but the fact that their athletes were winning gold left and right, it brought them into the spotlight. A reason I can believe this is because China wants to win and thats it. When I heard that in their open ceremony they told the girl who was supposed to sing that she wasn't pretty enough so they used her voice and let another girl take the credit. I was stunned, I don't see how you could be so cruel, just to have a better looking girl on stage in front of the world. After hearing that story, the underage controversy seemed 100% possible. A solution to this problem is to lift the age limit and let all ages compete. If this rule stays, China and many other countries will continue to bring in young girls to compete and break the rule. You might ask why is this a big deal, its a big deal because it might start the breaking of other rules in the future. If we dont settle this one, it could have the domino effect and other nations will keep breaking other rules. To save the integrity of the prestigious olympic games we need to stand strong and solve this issue.
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2 comments:
In reading this post, I ultimately agree with the idea that the Olympics should be open to all ages. My argument behind this idea is that regardless of age, the cream of the crop will rise to the top. The only alternative to this is to step up the part of the Olympic committee that is responsible for determining if athletes meet the age requirement. And as with everything where there is one rule for thousands upon thousands of people, there will those who break them and do not get caught. It is unfortunate, and the most that can be done is punish those who do get caught for breaking the rules. But it will always happen.
As far as the girl that had the beautiful voice, but not the beauty, I find that extremely wrong on the part of whoever was in charge of deciding who should sing. I would be furious if I was in that situation, although I guess in a communist government, it really doesn’t matter what you think. I am in total agreement with you.
I definitely remember seeing the young gymnasts of team China that seemed to be even younger than what was expected. I don't understand how it can be fair that these youngsters were allowed to compete, let alone receive metals despite their rule breaking. I do not remember the specifics of what children won metals and were allowed to keep them but I honestly find this outrageous. The fact is, despite whether or not they are the best gymnasts in China, they were breaking the rules. To me, this means they should not have been able to compete or received metals, as simple as that. However, on the other hand how can you take a prize away from a child once it is given, it seems wrong. And I use the word child because that’s exactly what they are, I want to emphasize that despite their talent, it is not their time to be competing in the Olympics.
It seems as though winning is all that was important to China in these games. They were willing to break rules to allow talented children to compete in the games. They just wanted the gold. To impress the rest of the world, they even outcast young talents as ‘too ugly’ using their gift on display. Their display of ethics in the past Olympic games is truly disappointing.
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