Gymnastics History

In November 2001, at China’s Ninth National Games, a small gymnast from Beijing captured the country’s attention. Newspapers called her “Kang Douzi”—“Little Bean Kang”—and, almost without exception, they described her the same way: just thirteen years old. She cried after a costly fall on uneven bars that may have cost her team the gold. Days later, she rebounded to win the all-around title, throwing herself into her coach’s arms, still unmistakably a child on one of the biggest stages in Chinese sport.

And yet, within a year, that same gymnast had changed. By 2002, Kang Xin was no longer thirteen. According to her official profile, she was sixteen—old enough to compete internationally, old enough to stand alongside China’s senior team at the Asian Games.

How does a gymnast age three years in the span of one?

There’s a fact that the Chinese media likes to print:

July 28, 1996, was the day of the women’s uneven bars final at the Atlanta Olympics, and it was also Bi Wenjing’s 15th birthday.

她们的的故事要从亚特兰大说起，1996年7月28日这一天是亚特兰大奥运会女子高低杠决赛的日子，这一天也是毕文静15岁的生日。

“Nothing Is Impossible—The Girl Who Defeated the Queen” (做不到没有想不到 战胜皇后的女孩), Sohu Sports, April 16, 2007

There’s one problem with that story: Bi Wenjing didn’t turn 15 in 1996. She turned 13.

When Sun Xiaojiao won bronze on balance beam at the 2001 World Championships, she turned 17 that year, according to the FIG’s records. A year later, when she took gold at the 2002 World Cup Final, she turned 18.

But here’s the thing: Sun Xiaojiao was not born in 1984.

Ling Jie, like many Chinese gymnasts, was a standout on uneven bars and balance beam, and like many other Chinese bars and beam queens, her age appears to have been adjusted. In her case, her birth year was moved forward to 1982, making her eligible to compete at the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, where the Chinese women won team gold.

Even during her competitive career, there were indications that Ling Jie had both a registered “competition age” and an “actual age” (实际年龄). What, precisely, her “actual age” is remains a matter of debate. Today, Ling Jie lives in the United States, where she coaches at World Champions Centre—the Biles family’s gym—and uses one birth year; yet in the coverage of the Sydney Games, the Chinese press circulated another.

This article does not attempt to resolve the question of her true birth year. What is clear, however, is that she was not born in 1982 and therefore was not 16 at the 1998 Asian Games.

Below, you can find what has been printed about her age, as well as several profiles about the 1999 beam champion.

Qiao Ya was a member of the Chinese team that won silver at the 1995 World Championships. Like many of China’s beam queens, she came agonizingly close to an individual medal: in the 1994 event final, she fell at the end of her layout stepout series, dropping out of contention and into seventh place. In 1995, Qiao Ya once again finished seventh on beam (without a fall). But when she hit her routine, it was a thing of beauty.

Her career followed a familiar pattern in another respect. Like many Chinese gymnasts of the era, her age was adjusted. Her birth year was changed from 1979 to 1977, which made her eligible for the 1991 World Championships and the 1992 Olympic Games, though she ultimately competed in neither.

She did appear at the 1992 Chunichi Cup, where she placed thirteenth in the all-around. In 1993, she competed primarily in smaller meets such as the China Cup, where she won the all-around at her actual age of fourteen and at her competitive age of sixteen. Her first major senior assignments, however, did not come until 1994, when she was fifteen and age-eligible by her true birth year (1979).

In 2006, the Chinese women’s team won the world title for the first time. The youngest member of that team was He Ning. According to her FIG records, she was born on November 13, 1990.

Yet at the time, Chinese online sources suggested she might have been even younger. For example, a biography published on the CCTV website listed her birthdate as December 18, 1991, which would have made her just 14 during the World Championships, turning 15 two months afterward. If true, He Ning would have been underage in Aarhus, Denmark.

Below are biographical materials for He Ning from the 2006 World Championships, as well as a profile published on her province’s official news portal following her all-around victory at the 2006 Asian Games.

Pang Panpan emerged as one of China’s unexpected heroes at the 2006 World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark, where she competed three times in the women’s team final, contributing to China’s first-ever women’s team world title. She went on to compete at the 2006 Doha Asian Games, winning team gold and a floor exercise silver.

The three sources translated below — two local newspaper profiles published the day after China’s 2006 team victory and a 2016 Hebei Provincial Sports Bureau charity feature — consistently give her birth year as 1990. That would make her 16 at the 2006 World Championships and just 15 — and therefore underage — when she won medals at the 2005 World Cup in Brazil, the Dutch Open, and the East Asian Games. Her internationally registered birthdate, however, was 1988. The adjustment appears aimed at making her eligible for selection to the 2004 Olympic team, for which a 1988 birth year would have placed her within the required age limits.

Enjoy these articles about the “Oriental Beauty.” (Their words — not mine.)

When was Wang Tiantian born? The answer depends on when you looked.

In 2003, China Sports Daily published a profile of the lesser-known gymnasts who would represent China at the World Championships that year. One of them was Wang Tiantian, a Tianjin gymnast described as a “quiet hard worker” returning from a knee injury. Her birth year, given in the profile, was 1988, which would have made her fifteen years old in Anaheim.

Her official biography gives a different answer: born in 1986. Under that date, she was fifteen at the 2001 National Games, where she won silver on floor, and seventeen at the 2003 Worlds. By the time of the Athens Olympics, Chinese journalists had started using 1986 as her birth year, reporting her as eighteen in their articles.

Below, you can find two newspaper articles: one from 2003 and another from 2004. Together, they show how Wang Tiantian aged three years in less than a year.

Wang Wenjing represented China at the 1987 and 1989 World Championships and the 1988 Seoul Olympics. What the official record obscures is how old she actually was when she competed at those competitions.