Chinese Athletes Can't Have Enough Identification

Having faced the indignity that was having its 2000 Olympics women's gymnastics team striped of a bronze medal because on of its members was underage, the country is taking great pains to ensure that a similar fiasco doesn't happen again in international competition.

With the Youth Olympics Games looming next month in Singapore, added attention is being paid to the matter. After all, the suspicions didn't dissipate after the 2000 Games. Claims were made that members of China's gold medal winning gymnastics team in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing were as young as 14. The team was later cleared by the International Gymnastics Federation.

China, obviously, would not like to be the subject of such talks again, even if it means requiring every possible issued form of identification from its athletes.

The China Daily report stressed that officials examined six forms of identification for each athlete in the delegation for Singapore, including birth certificates, ID cards, passports and domestic athlete registration cards, as well as domestic and international authentication for competitions.

No retinal scan or DNA test? C'mon now. My man Bruce can get you forged copies of any Chinese government document you can name, easy peasy. It's like they're begging to get caught again.