Issues about the Olympic Games 2008 in China

[tennisman1990]

Many people think China is cheating because of their record medal count this year but i personally feels that they did nothing wrong. they might of put more money into training their athletes but why not if they are that rich. some of the issues are:

Opening ceremony:

who cares if some of the performances in the opening ceremony are not real. its not like the Americans never got caught lip singing before. The truth is that the opening and closing ceremony is more than spectacular and for the amount of money and time China put into the games produced clear results.

Chinese athletes underage:

even though there were a couple Chinese athletes who were under 16, i don't understand why people are complaining about them competing. In a sport like gymnastics, where it is mostly individual performances, they are competing against the judges for scores, not like hockey, where they are competing against other players who's older than they are and is mostly likely bigger than they are. If they are that good, how can anyone not let them compete. its like in tennis, if theres a under 12 year old kid who is so good at tennis that he can beat most u18 national level players, I'm sure he can play in u18's .

who cares if the Chinese athletes starts their training at age 3. the fact is, without love and passion for the sports, there is no way anyone can win a medal at the Olympic level and i think it is safe to say that each and every Chinese athlete who competed in the Olympic showed more than enough love and passion for the games.

i remember the American said prior to the games (might not of been the exact quote): "in the Olympic games, its the Americans vs rest of the world" but after 2008, i think it is safe to say "it is the Americans vs China vs rest of the world).

this is just my opinion on some of the issues brought up during the Olympics, feel free to post whatever you think about some of these issues or any others that i might of not mentioned.

 

[Fee]

There is no issue with the lip synching in the Opening Ceremony, there is an issue because the very young girl who was chosen to do the lip synching is not the very young girl who actually sang the song. The actual singer of the song was taken out of the Opening Ceremony that morning and told she wasn't pretty enough to be on TV. That was the problem.

I don't care who wins what count of medals, I don't care if China has state sponsored training schools for their athletes, but I do care that they broke the age requirement for the gymnastics competition. That rule is there for a reason, they know it, they accepted it, and I believe they took very drastic steps to knowingly break that rule to win a medal. Pretty pathetic, but we already did an entire thread about that.

 

[koopa_troopa]

I didn't really have an issue with the singing issue, but I do have a problem with the age issue. Sure, if an underage person wins thats great for that person. But at what cost? Kids do not know priorities at that age. If they are offered a chance to compete in the olympics, would they reject it to concentrate on school? I doubt it. And how many other 13 year old kids did China encourage to train for the olympics only to throw them away when they weren't good enough? What are those kids going to do when they neglected their studies and weren't able to win a medal? If you are saying its ok for China to encourage this behavior, too its almost as bad as encouraging child labor.