Revisiting Past Age Falsifications

[Kittentoes]

Her hair in Seoul was the epitome of terrible 1980s fashion. There were so many terrible hairstyles that decade, but the short poodle perm was easily the worst.

Never will I hold that against anyone. My mother forced that on me for years. It was not a consensual hairstyle.

I liked Silivas quite a lot. I have decided to stop liking gymnasts, because they are either going to break or be horrible people.

 

[phoenix7]

I agree on 1968 making sense with Szabo. It was just the very early record of her being mentioned as 7 in 1976 that even made me wonder if others had questioned it before.

I found the minimum age change to 15 was voted on in the summer of 1980. Perhaps she was aged the one year with an eye to 1981, before knowing or suspecting what was coming.

Yes, and I suspect that she (unlike Lavinia Agache) was too high profile to be bumped up another year after winning Junior Europeans in 1980.

 

[rlayt]

Romania never had penalties for age falsification. They owe us all at least one favor so I ask they boot Camelia.

 

[Denn]

On Facebook, there were some strong reactions by Romanians (not sure if they live there still or are expats) to the recent attention about age falsification in Romania.

Some of the posters felt that the age falsification was suddenly being dredged up and piled onto the current concerns with the Romanian gymnastics scene. I admit that I sort of saw their point... On the other hand, I also feel like most other countries that falsified ages were duly punished at some point (China, North Korea) or no longer are countries (Soviet Union).

At least one other Romanian was tired of what they described as a culture of being okay with cheating and glad it got attention now. (I was surprised at that generalization in 2025... vs., say, 1985).

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

On Facebook, there were some strong reactions by Romanians (not sure if they live there still or are expats) to the recent attention about age falsification in Romania.

Some of the posters felt that the age falsification was suddenly being dredged up and piled onto the current concerns with the Romanian gymnastics scene. I admit that I sort of saw their point... On the other hand, I also feel like most other countries that falsified ages were duly punished at some point (China, North Korea) or no longer are countries (Soviet Union).

At least one other Romanian was tired of what they described as a culture of being okay with cheating and glad it got attention now. (I was surprised at that generalization in 2025... vs., say, 1985).

Well, punished up to a point. China have certainly got away with more than they were sanctioned for!

But this is why the whole situation is so batshit. We know for sure that at least those 4 countries faked DOBs, and they've all had at least one instance that went unaddressed (I say at least one because afaik the only North Korean example is the athlete who did the junior and then university competitions within a year, but the odds of her being the only one seem remote). What we don't know is the extent to which they were doing it, and how much evidence might be available but has never come up due to SOL. I make this point occasionally on Reddit to zoomer China fans who think it's not fair that the Eastern Bloc got away with all of it because of timing and want the SOL abolished. Any reopening process would have to go way beyond just Romania. Part of me wants to visit the parallel universe where the IOC and FIG have done just that, actually, if only for the chaos on some of the podiums.

Looking at all this with some distance, it's very lucky for the sport that the advantage of using younger gymnasts happened to fade away around the same time the internetisation of everything kicked in. Things could've got a lot more damaging otherwise. I'm not sure we appreciated at the time, even as the group at the epicentre of discussing this issue in 08, exactly how that could've developed. Or I didn't, at least. Maybe some of you were more forward thinking.

 

[IratePanda]

Well, punished up to a point. China have certainly got away with more than they were sanctioned for!

But this is why the whole situation is so batshit. We know for sure that at least those 4 countries faked DOBs, and they've all had at least one instance that went unaddressed (I say at least one because afaik the only North Korean example is the athlete who did the junior and then university competitions within a year, but the odds of her being the only one seem remote). What we don't know is the extent to which they were doing it, and how much evidence might be available but has never come up due to SOL. I make this point occasionally on Reddit to zoomer China fans who think it's not fair that the Eastern Bloc got away with all of it because of timing and want the SOL abolished. Any reopening process would have to go way beyond just Romania. Part of me wants to visit the parallel universe where the IOC and FIG have done just that, actually, if only for the chaos on some of the podiums.

Looking at all this with some distance, it's very lucky for the sport that the advantage of using younger gymnasts happened to fade away around the same time the internetisation of everything kicked in. Things could've got a lot more damaging otherwise. I'm not sure we appreciated at the time, even as the group at the epicentre of discussing this issue in 08, exactly how that could've developed. Or I didn't, at least. Maybe some of you were more forward thinking.

I didn't think about it at the time, but the internet has certainly made it difficult, if not impossible, to hide anything. Perhaps 2008 was a cautionary tale for potential bad actors.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I didn't think about it at the time, but the internet has certainly made it difficult, if not impossible, to hide anything. Perhaps 2008 was a cautionary tale for potential bad actors.

Yes, and that was even before much social media existed. It would probably have been even more intense if twitter had been widely used, for example.

 

[RedBirdie]

China and North Korea were caught and punished because they were foolish enough to keep submitting documentation with different DOBs in a fairly short timeframe. FIG and the IOC are more than happy to let this stuff go so long as you don't submit passports with different birthdates--even if your internal databases show a different DOB, even if your own internal press writes "It's a shame she's too young to compete at next year's Olympics!" and yet she competes at those Olympics anyway. It's not the cheating they hate, it's the inconsistency.

 

[MaryClare]

The difference is that China and North Korea were caught, due to administrative proof. With Romania and USSR, all there is are gymnasts many years later saying their date of birth was changed.

What surprises me is, is that there are no cases from east Germany? Given the huge state doping programme that was going on at the time, reissuing a few birth certificates would have been comparatively easy

 

[rlayt]

I wonder if the official records for East Germany are even available.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Mmm, I've wondered in the past if any of the other Eastern Bloc countries were at it too. After all, it's never been looked at and half the countries had stopped existing by the time the first official fake DOB case happened.

On the Soviet point, do we have any information on how long they likely did it for? All the possibilities I've heard about were the early to mid 80s period. Which isn't to say they weren't doing it for longer, but they were also the country who had least need for it. With everyone else the rationale is more obvious.

 

[Puffin]

Was it as a result of the July 1980 decision of FIG to change the minimum age from 14 to 15 that took effect 6 months later 1981?

Many countries must have had juniors in the pipeline who they expected to be eligible for 1981/1983 Worlds/1984 Olympics but all of a sudden they weren't.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Was it as a result of the July 1980 decision of FIG to change the minimum age from 14 to 15 that took effect 6 months later 1981?

Many countries must have had juniors in the pipeline who they expected to be eligible for 1981/1983 Worlds/1984 Olympics but all of a sudden they weren't.

That surely must've had some impact, but it looks like Romania at least were probably doing this before. There's no rational explanation for them changing Szabo's DOB but only enough to make her 14 in 1981 otherwise.