FIG Revokes Chinese Gymnastics Medal

I Did My Best

When I meet people in computer security circles or at conferences and I'm identified as Stryde, the Olympic story comes up pretty often, and the comment I seem to get the most is "how did you let them get away with it?" I've never understood this sentiment, the idea that I somehow have more power than a Publish button on Blogger, and I often counter with "Well I was going to launch an airstrike but I reconsidered." Little did I know, the president of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), Bruno Grandi, has been using the same joke.

From This interview:
"Grandi said it was conceivable that China had cheated in Beijing"
"There was strong circumstantial evidence, certainly, but these investigations are not my job ... I'm not the police or Interpol. If I find that there was cheating, then I can act." ... "I had everything sent to the IOC and the IOC has carried out its investigations and the figures were the same ... The IOC gave us its findings, and we checked them and there was nothing. When people on the Internet find fake documents, you need to legally prove that these are fake, and that's not my job. I have to respect the documents that the Chinese government gives me. What else should I do - declare war on China?"

Putting aside for a moment the "fake documents" phrase, and assuming for a moment that Grandi does not understand that the documents I linked to were hosted by the Chinese government itself, verifiably, for years, the most important part of that interview is the last phrase. Grandi's process, and the IOC's process, requires them to trust documents that are provided to them by governments. This is a great process for finding athletes that are cheating, and a totally failed process for finding governments that are cheating. What justice system would make the defendant an authority on his own guilt? Only the IOC and the FIG.

As Grandi says, a fact-finding authority with the power to prosecute a government for fraud was never involved. The servers from which the world watched the Chinese government censor the truth in real time were never seized and forensically analyzed. No one was ever caught or prosecuted for deleting any of the primary documents off of Chinese government web servers as age records vanished one by one under our watching eyes. And the reason for this is that the FIG by their own admission are not empowered to question governments. So when we say that the Chinese gymnasts were cleared by the FIG, we need to be very clear about what that actually means: not much.

A Confession Is Not Enough

About a week after the translated Yang Yun video created by myself and Heather Lawver was posted, the FIG re-opened their investigation into Chinese gymnasts competing in the Sydney Olympics. Yesterday, as an alert reader pointed out, the FIG revoked the Bronze medal awarded to Dong Fangxiao in Sydney, due to paper evidence they managed to find of her employment under her real age. The Chinese government immediately responded, claiming "there is no problem in Dong Fangxiao's age." What's interesting is that the FIG did not revoke the medal of Yang Yun, who is seen here confessing on state television to competing under age. It is important to note that for the FIG, a videotaped confession was not sufficient evidence. So, to summarize:

• The FIG is by their own admission not authorized to investigate governments for fraud


• The documents I identified implicate the government as having committed fraud


• The removal of every single linked document from government web servers indicates fraud


• A videotaped confession is considered insufficient proof


• Despite all these limitations, the Chinese have still lost a medal for age falsification

Readers are welcome to examine my archives and what evidence is left and make their own conclusions. I haven't written about this since it happened because I felt it became a sports story and not a technology story, and the technology story I was interested in was becoming lost in the noise. I wanted to talk about document permanence, transparency, and the amazing impact both were having on our culture. Fox News just wanted me to say that someone was cheating. In the end, as the FIG prepares to take a medal back, I will say only this: I stand by the integrity of my findings.

- stryde.hax