Faith and Gymnastics, or, Are the Chinese Too Young?

With the Olympics underway at the very same time the school year is getting underway, my colleagues and I have naturally been following the Olympics. I won't dwell on the probable reason for our interest stemming from the excitement of the Games compared to the mind and body numbing of the meetings of pre-planning (that's for another post since I also attended a vestry meeting last night!). However, the Olympic topic we've been focusing on during breaks and at the lunch table is not Michael Phelps's quest to break Mark Spitz's record of gold medals in a single Games, but the age of the Chinese woman's gymnastics team.

A few years ago, the Olympics instituted a rule similar to the one they imposed for figure skating: you have to be at least 16 years old to compete, or turn 16 during the calendar year. They wanted to protect young athletes from being both exploited by their countries or, in the case of gymnastics, used unfairly by their countries. In gymnastics, the younger the athlete, the more amazing the skills they can perform. There is debate about why this is, but much of the advantage to being younger has to do with the fact that they weigh less, so they are able to do more, whipping their bodies around faster and harder, and it is much easier to stop these movements if you weigh less too (I'll skip the physics lesson.)

This morning's NY Times has an article about how more questions have arisen about the Chinese gymnastics team now that they won the team competition yesterday. Like how come one of the girls is missing a tooth, yet has no bruises around her face from a fall, suggesting that it might be a baby tooth that fell out and has yet to be replaced. Also, just looking at the women's/girl's physiques, some seem to have not yet hit that wonderful time of life known as puberty. From the Times' article:

"The Chinese gymnasts lack curves and have an average height of 4 foot 9 and an average weight of 77 pounds. The women on the U.S. team, generally more muscular and shapely than the Chinese, are 3 1/2 inches taller and 30 pounds heavier."

As junior high teachers, my colleagues and I are used to looking at a variety of students who have and haven't hit puberty yet. The Americans look like they have gone through it; the Chinese, not so much.

But the article points out that the Chinese government has provided the passports for their gymnasts, and (surprise!) all of them satisfy the age requirement. A government, especially a totalitarian one, possibly lying in order to avoid a scandal? In the words of Homer Simpson, that's unpossible!

Excuse the heavy-handed, religious connection, but I couldn't help but think about how this Olympic controversy lends itself to a discussion of faith. One of my favorite quotes from the Bible is Hebrews 11:1, "Faith is is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen." As many wiser, smarter, and more knowledgeable people than me have pointed out, it's not faith in something if you can prove it. So sometimes you just have to let go, and have faith.

But at the same time, faith need not be blind or stupid. When there is enough evidence for reasonable doubt, even biblical quotes fail to reassure us. In this gymnastic controversy, I'm not suggesting that we should just have blind faith, though: there is too much evidence that creates doubt for us to have faith in the Chinese government, especially with their history of behavior. And that's what makes this situation difficult. With the International Olympic Committee satisfied by the gymnasts' government-issued passport, there is nowhere to go from here, as frustratingly un-satisfying as that is.

This isn't just sour grapes, though, because Team USA finished second: with all the falls and stumbles in the last rotation, the floor exercise, there was no way we could have won or deserved to do so. The potential falsehoods by the Chinese team, however, is just a travesty of the sportsmanship and spirit of competition that the Olympics stand for, which is why this incident mars the gymnastics competition.

But I have faith that there are plenty of other incidents in these Beijing Games that do and will showcase the amazing spirit and humanity of the Olympics, despite Chinese gymnastics knocking a tooth out of the Games.

And after the first comment on this story, in the interest of balance, here is a Dan Wetzel column on Yahoo! that takes the position that the age thing is just sour grapes by the Karolyis, who Wetzel claims would love to break the rules too.

Face plants, the Olympics, Passions, and the Holy Spirit (a longer post)

Because I had trouble embedding it, follow the link to watch this video from the 800-meter final at the Olympic Track Trials in Eugene, Oregon, first--watch about 15 seconds from about the 4:42 mark. I promise the reason I chose it has more to it than simply wanting to watch some poor runner land on his face in the Olympic Trials.

Now that you're back, what did you think? Did I choose it just for the face plant? Or is it an interesting view of what someone (Christian Smith) was willing to do (dive face first) to achieve their dream (making it to the Olympics in Beijing next month)?

When I first saw this video, I did laugh a little at Smith's faceplant. But then I read he was the 31st qualifier out of 30 invited to the Trials; he only got in when someone else dropped out. And he did it all 16 months after a burst appendix and pneumonia. His making the team is a story almost on par with Rocky or, as Bob Longino would point out, Chariots of Fire. As I thought about it, I realized Smith's faceplant was an excellent definition of passion and the Holy Spirit.

To be honest, whenever I think of passions, I think of my high school German teacher. In one of the oddest combinations I've experienced, our German teacher was a small, Japanese-American man, Herr Nakamatsu, who we all called Herr Naki. He was easily one of the best teachers I ever had, and he also happened to dream of being a professional pianist.

But he didn't just dream. Most days he practiced from 5-9am, went to school and taught until 3, graded papers until 5 or 6, then went home to practice until 11 pm. And he loved them both: he loved teaching and he loved playing the piano, even if he loved the latter a little more. At the end of my junior year, he won the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, jump-starting his new career as a pianist, complete with a record deal and two years of concert bookings.

Piano playing was Naki's passion, and he devoted himself fully to it even while devoting himself fully to teaching. In the documentary about that year's Van Cliburn Competition, the conductor said "Passions are what won't leave you alone." That's a good summary or passions, I think: the things that make you want to practice piano eight hours a day even while working full-time, or make you dive forward, landing on both your face and the Olympic team. Passions are the things that burn inside of you.

And that makes me think of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit tends to appear as a bird at times in the Bible, but the one that stands out to me is when He appears as tongues of flame on Pentecost, giving the Apostles a whole new life's passion. After following Jesus, they are lost after He has ascended to heaven, not doing anything really. That is until the Holy Spirit descends on them in a violent, stormy wind. This isn't the peaceful, dove-like Holy Spirit, but one that wants to get them moving. And off they go, spreading the Word, and creating Christianity as we know it (at the risk of a gross over-simplification.)

With the Spirit burning inside them, not leaving them to sit quietly anymore, I'm sure that some of them would have dove across a finish line if they ran a race at that moment. My money's on Peter: he seems crazy enough to do that.

External Links:

A good video summaryof the Cliburn Competition here, with some clips of Naki winning.

Naki on Wikipedia page and some video of him playing on YouTube

A great article on Christian Smith embodying the spirit of the Olympics from the Eugene Register-Guard .