IF YOU used a fake ID to buy a beer last week, you may have had Olympian company: He Kexin, the Chinese gymnast who won gold on the uneven bars, is widely suspected of using a passport that misrepresents her age — a fake ID prepared by her government in order to evade the requirement that Olympic gymnasts be at least 16 years old. Whenever there’s a minimum age, evading it with fake ID is dishonest — but the real injustice lies in the minimum age itself.
I don’t know whether He is 16, as her passport claims, or 14, as a widely cited report by the Chinese government news agency Xinhua would make her. But if she is too young, and yet the best in her field, the scandal lies much less with the Chinese government than with the Olympic authorities. Their Games are supposed to symbolize human excellence in the field of athletics — but their rules would have excluded an athlete their own judges determined to be the best at her game.
One argument in defense of minimum ages for athletes is that young people’s bodies can’t stand the strain of adult-level sports. Obviously, people’s bodies do change as they age, but not everyone goes through the same changes on the same schedule. News reports indicate that medicine cannot distinguish confidently between a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old. So if there’s some stage of physical development a gymnast needs to reach before being able to compete safely, and if the rules ought to guard against injuries by excluding those who haven’t reached that stage, checking ages won’t do it — not unless the minimum age is set quite high.
A former Soviet Olympic gymnast argued in The New York Times that youth brings advantages in that sport — that younger competitors are lighter and “worry less.” If these are the reasons that underlie their exclusion from the games, they are being excluded because they tend to be better at gymnastics — excluded so that inferior gymnasts can become Olympic champions.
But even if that is not the reason, it is the effect. If we assume that in the Olympic games, the best of the competitors win, then minimum-age rules are not necessary to exclude any but the best athletes. Anyone who isn’t good enough yet, but might be when she’s older, simply won’t win till she improves. If she needs enough improvement, she won’t make it through the tryouts. The only people who are prevented from winning by a minimum-age rule are those who, if allowed to compete, would win — by hypothesis, the best athletes.
The same is true of many other minimum ages. Consider the driving age. To get a driver’s license, you have to be able to demonstrate that you know the traffic laws and can handle a car. Young people who can’t learn the traffic laws or can’t handle a car — defenders of the driving age sometimes mention small boys and girls who can’t see over the dashboard — can’t pass those tests. The only people kept off the road by the driving age are those who could meet every other requirement.
Of course, the theory behind the driving age is that people who haven’t reached a certain age are unable to drive safely. Thus, on the premise that young people can’t drive safely, it denies licenses to just those young people who actually can drive safely. The ones who can’t would be kept off the road by the exams anyway.
Some defenders of the driving age argue that younger people tend to be less responsible than their elders.But the fact is clear that there are responsible and irresponsible people at all ages. Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the National Youth Rights Association, told me he has a 28-year-old friend who has managed to rack up 30-40 speeding tickets, lost his license for a while, and drove without one — and is now licensed again. Yet I know and have known (among other ways, through NYRA’s online forums) numerous responsible teenagers. As Koroknay-Palicz said, “The law should not be written in such a way that ... a safe and responsible 14-year-old driver is not allowed to drive” while an irresponsible 30- or 40-year old driver is.
Koroknay-Palicz also pointed out that drivers who live on farms and start driving equipment at an early age learn to be very good drivers at an early age. The safety of the roads could be improved by getting most drivers started younger, but making it harder to get a full license.
Whatever the field, ensuring safety or honoring excellence requires judging individuals. The calendar will never tell us enough.
Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Tuesdays in the Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
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