This doesn't surprise me. It is a tough issue to tackle. Is child abuse in one country child abuse in another? That is pretty much the only reason why countries don't allow younger athletes to compete. It is an ethics issue, not a fairness issue. In the end, since this is a multi-country event, rules need to be established in advance and if you break them, you cheated and you deserve to lose. Unfortunately for those girls, they aren't at fault because they were children at the time.

Pandajuice wrote:

That whole Sydney Gymnastics competition was fucked up. I remember being really into gymnastics at the time and being outraged that they messed it up so badly. There was this controversy, dodgy scoring on many of the routines because of judging "glitches", and they even accidentally set one of the apparatus a couple centimeters too low, so a lot of girls fell on their vaults and weren't allowed to redo them after the mistake was found and corrected.

I had never heard about the settings being low. That is really bad. A part of me does think that units of measure should be present on the devices themselves so that they can be clearly seen at all times by both the people competing as well as the audience and judges. Even still... their moves are so specific, someone could really get hurt with mistakes like that not being caught.

IceWarm wrote:

It goes both ways, either they are too young(this topic/article) or too old(the whole thing with the pitcher being too old for little league) In the end just be honest. In these days if you cheat on the national/Olympic level you will get caught.

Be honest unless you are a female ski jumper. In that case put a ball of socks in your crotch and wear shoulder pads or you don't get to compete.