Hackers unearth more underage gymnast allegations

Hackers have unearthed more compelling evidence that China's dual-gold medal winning gymnast He Kexin is underaged and should have been barred from competing at the Olympics.

A US-based internet security consultant and part-time hacker calling himself "Stryde Hax" has trawled through the search results on Google, Google China and the Chinese search engine Baidu, unearthing numerous examples of cached official Excel spreadsheet showing He Kexin listed as being born on January 1, 1994.

Search engines work by trawling the web and indexing search results. They usually take a snapshot of their findings at the same time in a process known as caching. So while original web pages can expire or be removed, the cached snapshot of the page can usually still be recovered.

The 1.42-metre (4'8") tall gymnast was part of the women's gymnastic team which won gold and then took an individual gold medal in the uneven bars at the Beijing Olympics.

If correct, that would make her 14 instead of 16 and under the competition rules, gymnasts must be aged 16 in the year an Olympics takes place in order to qualify to compete.

The rules were put into place to avoid exploiting younger gymnasts, who have more flexible bodies.

Chinese officials say He Kexin's passport and birth certificate list her as being born on January 1, 1992 - which would make her 16-years-old. When asked about her age recently, He Kexin was quoted as saying: "My real age is 16, I don't care about what other people say, it's none of their business."

Stryde Hax claims to work for the US-based Intrepidus Group, a provider of information security consulting services. His findings have been meticulously laid out in his blog with links and screenshots to prove and preserve his findings.

"Much of the coverage regarding Kexin's age has only mentioned 'allegation' of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state, directly available from China by clicking on the links above rise to a level of evidence higher than 'allegations'," he writes.

"How official are these documents? Pretty dang official - they were issued by the General Administration of Sport of China."

Among the points listed in the mission statement of the General Administration of Sport - the country's peak sports body - is the following: "fighting against drug use and other unfair competition measures".

Asked about the age controversy earlier tis month, IOC President Jacques Rogge said it was not his organisation's job to check the age of athletes. "The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes," he said.

Stryde Hax posted his findings on his blog and then put out a call on Digg, a leading social news aggregator website, for others to join in the hunt for more examples - a process known as crowd sourcing.

And at least one other Digg user - a person called Karate3409 - has found corroborating evidence.

Karate3409 uncovered a cached web page on the city of Chengdu Sports Bureau's website listing He Kexin's birthday as January 1, 1994. The original is no longer visible and returns a "Template Error" message.

Stryde Hax's discoveries support earlier reports regarding He Kexin's age. Several bloggers have previously found links to news stories and photo captions - in both English and Chinese published last year and earlier this year - which refer to He as being aged 13. One cached version of a story published in May this year refers to her as being aged 14.

Many of the original links and some of the cached results have since been removed.

He was at the centre of another controversy earlier this week when she edged out an American competitor for the gold medal in the women's apparatus after a panel of judges - including Australia's Helen Colagiuri - invoked a complicated tie-break formula used for the first time to decide an Olympic competition.

Allegations have been made that two other Chinese gymnasts, Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin, have also had their ages altered in order to allow them to compete.