Fake fireworks: True, those were digitized effects on TV. But do you really think Beijing's air pollution/haze could be cleaned up overnight?
Opening Ceremony Lipsynching: Happens everywhere. Britney did it, Russian popstars are notorious for doing that. Now as far as replacing the 7 year old for being too ugly, only the PRC itself needs to worry once this girl grows up...
Fake protest zones: Seriously, did you really think the government would approve your "Free Tibet" demonstration? Go back and read a history book. Remember "let a hundred flowers bloom"?
Underage gymnasts: OK see below...
Aussie gymnastics judge sent hate mail as Americans cry foul
An Australian gymnastics judge has been sent abusive emails and been targeted by a smear campaign after being involved in a controversial medal tie at the Beijing Games.
The USA’s Nastia Liukin was awarded silver in the uneven bars, despite tying on 16.725 points with China’s He Kexin, who was awarded gold.
The decision was based on a tiebreak rule based on judge’s deductions.
Australian judge Helen Colagiuri was the judge who gave the highest deduction to Liukin to help give He the award.
Sounds like the yanks are being poor sports. If not for the attacks on this judge, then it's the contraversy over He's age.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080820-evidence-of-age-fraud-mounts-china-insists-gymnasts-are-16.html
One of the controversies that's been swirling around the Chinese Olympic Games since they began is the age of several of China's gymnasts. According to Chinese officials (and, of course, official passports and ID cards), both He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan are 16, and therefore old enough to compete in the Olympic Games. Unfortunately for China, there's a growing body of evidence pointing in the opposite direction, including online evidence a gumshoe hacker discovered lurking in the cache of Baidu, China's equivalent of Google.
A story that ran Beijing Evening News on December 2, 2007, reported that He Kexin was 13, while the New York Times turned up evidence in other Chinese papers that cited her age as 14, with a birth date of January 1, 1994. Currently, He's passport lists her date of birth as January 1, 1992. Similarly, Jiang Yuyuan's own national identification card lists her birth date as October 1, 1993.
Now, new information gathered from Baidu's cache further confirms these allegations. Over at Stryde Hax, the anonymous author describes his search for official information on He Kexin's real birth date. Google, rather suspiciously, has been scrubbed clean—searching the engine's cache reveals references to He Kexin, but He's name and data have been removed. As for Baidu, the main search function returns only government-approved data—a spreadsheet that purports to show information on Kexin has also been deleted—but checking the engine's cache proves that a copy of the document is still preserved. He Kexin's age, as listed in the preserved copy of an official Chinese document? 14.
Somehow none of this seems too surprising, given that it's China. The evidence against He Kevin sounds pretty convincing, but so far the IOC has refused to investigate this claim. There seems to be many who disagree with the age limit anyway. Perhaps, if the yanks weren't a bunch of whiners, then someone (a non-Americans) might actually give a shit!
I've been hearing plenty of people (Chinese) complaining about the Americans listing medals by total number rather than number of golds like every other country does, providing the impression that America is still on top. But hold on a sec... Didn't they do it this way back in Athens and Sydney too? I guess some people have short memory spans. Don't understand the fuss. Maybe one day when the United States switches to the metric system, they'll start listing by order of gold medals.
People can be such kids, I mean seriously what's up with the 2008 Olympics and picking on little girls? If people are going to make a fuss, why not target someone of similar age, like the Chinese Women's Volleyball team for example... I swear some of their team members are NOT 100% women.
