I have loved gymnastics for over 20 years. Back then I did cartwheels in front of the TV while watching the 1988 Olympics. I still have the VHS tape of that, and I remember every single bit of commentary (Dick Enberg, Bart Conner, and Mary Lou Retton) and every slight hop on the landings. I haven’t followed it in the past couple of years – the new scoring system was a total shock – but I still love the sport. I have a couple of thoughts to share.

I’m not very happy with the Chinese age scandal. I think they are definitely under 16, and the IOC should be ashamed for accepting those passports. Bela Karolyi is from a former Communist state, and he says passports are very easily falsified. There are some girls on their team who look well under 16. He Kexin is the most controversial, but I think Deng Linlin really looks like she could be even younger than 14, though she’s not one of the ones under heavy scrutiny. Now, it’s not that 14 year olds can’t compete for health reasons or whatever…Nadia was 14 in 1976. But the point is that current rules require 16+, and some of those girls aren’t 16. Yang Yun competed in Sydney at the age of 14 (she admitted it herself after the fact) and also Chinese press has internally reported some of this year’s athletes as being 14! I like Bela Karolyi’s solution…just take away the Olympic age limit. Then again, we’d have to get rid of juniors/seniors altogether if we did that, and you’d get very young kids trying to pull very difficult tricks. I find it interesting that the IOC/FIG will strip medals for accidental doping – Andreea Raducan was given a cold medicine and lost her gold medal – but not for blatant disregard of the rules. Then again, I’m not sure it’s fair to blame individual athletes for mistakes made by their coaches or superiors. Andreea Raducan didn’t know, and I’m sure Yang Yun was doing what she was told as well…”say you’re 16″ – “okay, I’m 16″…can you blame little girls for mistakes made either for their nation’s glory or their own health?

I’m turning my attention now to Yelena Mukhina. I’ve been watching a lot of very old gymnastics routines on YouTube, and I’ve come across quite a few “gymnastics disasters” videos too – collections of people falling on faces, falling on butts, etc. There’s one video that has me disturbed. The intelligent comments on that video have been saying it’s Yelena Mukhina in the video, who became a quadriplegic as a result of a failed Thomas salto back in 1980; she died in 2006 from complications relating to her accident. The video appears to be of a missed Thomas salto, so people are assuming it’s Mukhina, and I figured they were right. But I just watched it again, and I realized – Mukhina fell in training just prior to the 1980 Olympics. Not in competition, in training. There wouldn’t have been a number on her back, there wouldn’t have been sportscaster commentary, and there might not even have been cameras. Furthermore, the gymnast in the video is wearing red, and her trainers are clearly Asian, so the girl in the video is probably Chinese. But if that’s not Mukhina, who is it? The Thomas salto has been banned for women – following Mukhina’s accident – because it requires upper body strength that only the guys have. So who would have been performing it, and when? What happened to her? She’s obviously badly injured there, but I can’t figure out who she is. (It’s not Sang Lan, if you’re thinking along those lines – she was paralyzed on vault during the Goodwill Games in 1998.) I’d love to know if video of Mukhina’s fall exists, but I don’t think it does. That video is another girl, but who is she?