On April 28, 2010, the International Olympic Committee decided to accept the recommendation of the International Gymnastics Federation to revoke the bronze medals won by the Chinese Womens Gymnastic team at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games!
I can’t believe it!! The IOC actually made the right decision! They actually had the nerve to stand up to CHINA! Wow, just wow…
The Christian Science Monitor published a story about this, but they unfortunately neglected to mention that the FIG’s investigation only began when Mike “Stryde Hax” Walker & I started pulling all sorts of data off Chinese government servers, releasing video from official Chinese state television, and investigating the lives of their past Olympic stars.
But most importantly, in this instance, it was Mike’s sources within China that found the blog of the gymnast in question, Dong Fangxiao, where she admitted to having been born ‘in the year of the Ox’. I know all too well that the Chinese Year of the Ox was between 1985 and 1986. Why?
Because I was born in the year of the Ox. 🙂
With Fangxiao saying that she was too – in 1986 to be precise – that means that she would have been only 14 years old when she competed in Sydney. Whoopsies!
The Christian Science Monitor story also mentions that after the investigation began, the FIG discovered that Dong Fangxiao’s credentials for attending the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games also listed her birthdate as 1986, further corroborating the online evidence Mike & I were given by our secret sources within China.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if it hadn’t been for Mike, if it hadn’t been for me, if it hadn’t been for our brave, courageous sources within China, this investigation never would have happened. The FIG never would have found or noticed Dong Fangxiao’s blog or her credentials from the 2008 Olympic Games. And therefore, without us, their medals never would have been revoked and justice never would have been served.
As exciting as all this is, as great as it feels to know that I helped deal a huge devastating blow to the corrupt Chinese government and their abusive Beijing-based sports machine, there’s a small detail mentioned in the Christian Science Monitor article that warms my heart even more. It comes from the article’s very first paragraph.
“Chinese sports fans reacted with anger to the news that gymnast Dong Fangxiao had been stripped of her Olympic medal. But their ire was directed at the Chinese government, not the International Olympic Committee.”
Finally, at long last, people within China are becoming increasingly aware of the corruption within their own government, the rampant child abuse that the Chinese government is responsible for, how they victimize innocent children and their families, and for what? Olympic medals, glory for the State, for their own control and power. The lives of children and the parents who love them are crumpled up, tossed aside, no worth placed on their individuality, their hopes, their desires, their futures; all this and more gets tossed aside as if it were garbage, all in the name of glory for the State above all else. Who knows what Dong Fangxiao would have become, what heights she could have achieved on her own, if she had the same liberties and rights to self-determination that far too many of us take for granted. We’ll never know, because she was stolen away as a child from her parents and forced into a life of servitude to the State, flipping, contorting, performing for her masters.
The only way to really tear down this system, the only way to prevent it in the future, is to shine a bright light on it for the whole world to see. That’s what Mike and I tried to do. But what matters most isn’t just what the world thinks, it’s what the Chinese people think about the behavior of their own corrupt government. Only when individual Chinese people stand up and demand change from their government will these abuses ever stop. The IOC can’t change it, but their courageous decision to revoke those bronze medals has gotten the Chinese people talking! It has turned their attention to something that had been long hidden in the sidelines, hardly discussed, hardly mentioned.
Now the world knows, now the Chinese people know. They’re talking about it, it’s churning their stomachs, it’s bringing some people the world over to tears, thinking about what the Chinese government has put children like Dong Fangxiao through. It’s brought me to tears more times than I can count, thinking about the families affected by the Chinese government’s athletic programs; the parents whose children have been ripped from their arms, the children enslaved to a sport for the glory of a corrupt government; the pain, the anguish, the agony, and the lost lives that can never be replaced.
The people of China are awake now. They’re talking about it. They’re aware of what the Chinese government has done and continues to do to their own people. Their ire has finally been justly placed at the feet of those responsible: their own government. This is the first step toward the destruction of that system, toward ending those abuses once and for all.
I’m so very, very proud to say that I had a small part to play in what I hope one day will turn out to be the absolute dissolution of the stranglehold that communist China has over the lives of its own citizens. Whether it’s in sports or in day to day life, that oppression must end. If revoking an Olympic medal can serve to illuminate the devastation and destruction that Chinese communism leaves in its wake, then I think that could be the most noble purpose the Olympics could ever serve. And certainly, the most noble purpose I could have in my own life. The proud people of China deserve better. Their families deserve better, their children deserve better.
I hope this will spark further conversation and action in China. And quite frankly, throughout the world as a whole. We could all do with further reminders about what happens when governments are given too much power. I so sincerely hope that the story of these gymnasts, the struggles they’ve been through their entire life, their slavery to an out of control government, will instill a desire for freedom and self-determination among the Chinese people, and indeed, people everywhere. Only when the individual is key, will atrocities like this finally be put to rest. Only when the rights of man are respected and revered, will men everywhere be truly free.