Strict measures adopted to keep age problem off Chinese delegation

The Youth Olympic Games-bound athletes will take bone age assessment and be required to provide reliable documents to ensure their ages are real, Chinese delegation said on Wedensday.

Chinese deputy chef de mission Cai Jiadong said all eligible athletes in the delegation are subject to the bone age tests.

"All athletes under the age of 16 in the delegation will undergo nuclear magnetic resonance tests to ensure they are not overage," said Cai.

He explained that the NMR examination is only suitable for teenagers under 16.

"Besides, the delegation also required each athlete to provide six documents, namely the birth certificate, the identification card, the passport, domestic registration, domestic and foreign competition registration documents," Cai added.

"All the information on the documents must be consistent," he said.

The Chinese delegation, set up here on Wednesday, consists of 70 athletes with an average age of 16.6. All participants of the Games must be between 14 and 18.

They will compete in 102 events in 19 sports.

Chinese chef de mission Cai Zhenhua did not mention how many gold medals they would like to capture at the August 14-26 Games in Singapore but stressed the importance of fairplay and a clean Games for these youngsters, who mostly are from the national second or third string teams.

"Medals are important for competitive sports and sportsmanship, sport ethics and sport culture also should be valued," said Cai Zhenhua, vice director of China's State General Administration of Sport.

"So the top task for us is to ensure a clean team, which is free of doping or any rule-breaking matters," he said.

China was stripped of a bronze medal in the gymnastics women's team event at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games after one of its athletes Dong Fangxiao was found to be under age at that time.

The International Olympic Committee announced the decision in April and China accepted the punishment.

The Chinese Olympic Committee said they respected the IOC's decision and vowed "to prevent a repeat of such incidents in future."

Source: Xinhua