I haven’t watched any of it. I don’t have TV, which is a major factor but a weak excuse for watching absolutely zero coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games. I may have even lied to some of you about this, saying I’d watched snippets online. I’ve clicked on a few links but abandoned the quest when videos didn’t load right away, and I haven’t done much to really seek out coverage. But it’s embarrassing to admit this because it makes me feel like a bad American. And it makes me feel like a traitor to athletics, especially the obscure, grueling, and perpetually amateur sports that have always been most dear to me and rarely get any sort of audience, let alone the world stage.

But while I haven’t actually watched any of it, I’ve been following quite closely. I’ve read all the commentary and I know what’s going on.

I read everything I could find about the controversy over the Chinese gymnasts’ ages. They really do look exceptionally young, but doing rigorous athletic practices since you were 4 can stunt your growth like that. I still think it’s very suspicious and that makes it intriguing, but I have to wonder why it matters. If the Olympics is overall about pushing the human body and mind to peak performances, why are there rules about the competitors’ ages anyway?

Say those gymnasts aren’t 15. They may not even be 13, who knows. The obvious complaint is that it would be cheating, but that’s a pretty technical, sour-grapes kind of complaint. As far as cheating goes, being 14 is quite a bit different than, say, taking steroids. It’s just an arbitrary age line, not something to protect the spirit of the games.
So why do we even have that rule, and why do we care? Much has been made of swimmer Dara Torres because at 41 she’s so old for an Olympic athlete, and that’s seen as a tremendous feat and encouragement for middle-aged athletes of all abilities. Really it would be just as remarkable for a 13-year-old to earn a medal, but that end of the spectrum is condemned instead. In theory the age minimum is set to protect the athletes, because performing and training to an Olympic level is just not seen as appropriate for adolescents who couldn’t even get a driver’s permit in the U.S.
I don’t think its the ages of the Chinese gymnasts that bother us. It’s the system, that they’ve been cultivated as prime athletes since they were toddlers, that it’s been their whole childhood and therefore their whole life, that they know their coaches and teammates better than their families. We want them to be healthy, happy children, not world-class athletes, at least not yet. But we can’t have it both ways. We think that yes, it is about the medals and striving and peak performance, but it shouldn’t be so much about those things that it’s unpleasant, especially if it’s Communist.
The Olympics does a good job of glorifying all the work the athletes put in while effectively hiding it. We only see the vaguest references to the blisters, twisted ankles and surgery scars. We see the results of the hard work – tears of elation or disappointment – and we think we somehow share it. For a few weeks obsession and single-mindedness are transformed into inspiring dedication.

I want to see a photo spread of all the would-have-beens, the almost-world-class athletes with all their contorted X-rays and vomit and calluses and chronic knee pain. I want to see the ones who still can’t watch their event without crying, whether they barely missed the cut earlier this year or 20 years ago.

If the best person is the world at a given event at a given time in history is just 10 or 12 or 13 years old, we might as well let them compete and have their glory while they can snatch it up. Next year might bring injuries, burnout or – in the case of gymnastics – a growth spurt of an inch of two. If we were being rational, the only thing that would offend us about the Chinese gymnasts would be a sport that requires its best athletes to stay in a tiny state of muscled preadolescence. But we wouldn’t want to do that, because gymnastics is just so fun to watch.