Every. Four. Years.

The summer games are always entertaining. Even many of those who don't care much for sports find events enthralling. Of course, there are the controversies—stepping on ankles (not so much), smashing of knees, blood in the pool—and who can turn away from such great drama?

This year, of course, we are looking at the age of four Chinese gymnasts, collectively clinging to four individual and team gold medals. Should they be too young to compete (they must be sixteen in the Olympic year), those medals may be stripped, and everyone else will come up a slot in the standings.

We could look at which reporter found what on official sites or which hacker broke into what system to dig up more information, but until this is resolved, that won't do much for anyone. Let's, instead, consider the issues in play if China did cheat:

• They are the host country, so cheating looks worse when they do it than when others, like the North Korean shooter, get tossed (fair or otherwise, who really expects North Korea to play by the rules?).


• Going into the games, the Chinese were taking a lot of heat for not improving the nation's human rights record, though the IOC admits that part of the reason it awarded the games to Beijing was to get improvements in that area.


• Some people think the U.S. is whining or that the U.S. gymnasts will be shamed by losing to girls so much younger, ignoring the fact that youth is an advantage; however, I wonder how bad it looks that a country feels it has to cheat in order to compete against people who are, in terms of the sport, heading out of their prime.


• Finally, China's women's gymnastics team might get barred from the London games in 2012.
  

All of this because of a couple of years? I find it a tragedy that any government would result to such tactics (if in fact China did) to win a competition that purports to be based on the highest values of sportsmanship and honor. I find it worse when the country so doing is hosting the world at a competition lasting more than two weeks.

It truly is a sad day when China is taking morality lessons from our current administration. I had hoped they were better than that.