To the jaw-dropping disappointment of all 1.3 billion Chinese watching the Olympics – Liu Xiang pulled out of the 110m hurdles just minutes ago. An injury to his hamstring has been plaguing Liu for weeks, but he was hopeful he would be able to compete. It would be little surprise if he or his couch calculated it was better to not compete at all than to compete and fail in front of an entire nation that had pinned their Olympic hopes on him.
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People are going to hate me for saying this, but maybe it is karma for rule breaking gymnasts.
I *think* that the whole gymnast controversy over He Kexin being like 13 needs to be kept in perspective. She wasn’t taking performance enhancing drugs and, if anything, her age would be a detriment when competing against slightly older and stronger/more experienced athletes. The rule doesn’t exist to prevent a team from gaining an advantage it exists to protect children from being exploited.
I doubt the Chinese men’s hurdling team’s karma is in much jeopardy.
I agree on one level:
-They were not doping
-The rule is not about age in the sport creating advantage
-The rule was put in place to protect kids from being “farmed” and exploited.
However it seems quite clear to me that the Beijing Gymnastic officials (or whatever they call themselves) made a decision and that decision was to put the underage girls in the Olympics to win gold. They knew what they were doing was illegal and wrong and they still chose to do it. They even went so far as to create fake documents for the young athletes. They should have blocked all the Chinese written web sites with their real ages on them before the games began, but that’s another matter. What they did was wrong, pure and simple.
On an ethical level this is corrupt and beyond what the Olympic spirit is supposed to be about. The Olympics are about the world coming together and competing with each other on equal footing. But when a nation’s judgment is so clouded with the desire to win more gold medals than anyone else, some nations will make ill decisions, and karma has a strange way of rearing its ugly head sometimes.
Maybe I lack perspective on the issue, but IMO the Olympics is all about going over the top and over doing things on a grand scale, especially this year.