In swimming, the qualifying age is, I believe, is also 16, however I cannot find any reference to it on the internet.

However, my side point is that if one exhibits a gift for excellence in a specific area, should we not let that gift be nurtured? These young olympians are able to excel, and thus what gives one the right to hold them from excelling?

Speculating on the possibilities of under aged competition does not add to it. Moreover, I do not believe it is necessarily an environmentally dictated outcome, but rather more genetically based. Indeed, living in Australia, where there is no shortage of nutrients or indeed food itself, there are still many asian girls I personally know of who do not appear their 18 years.

Again, why are we not addressing the question? The question demands proof for the actual use of underage girls, rather than speculation and consequences on the assumption that they are underaged.

On a side note however, who is to say a gift should not be nurtured? If an individual has a gift, what gives you the right to prevent it's expression? If you recall Ian Thorpe, the Australian 400m swimmer, he too won international competitions at the age of 14, becoming the youngest ever individual male world champion at the 1998 Perth World Championships. Who is to say that the talented should be dissqualified?

So how does this support the argument? Is it mere heresay?

From my experiance, I can assure you that many chinese girls appear underage while frequently being over age. Infact, there is a standing joke between our year group and one of the girls that she would never make it into an R rated movie because she appears almost twelve, and yet she older than the majority of the grade, and is already 18. Just because these smaller, less quickly maturing athletes, who do not comply the the media's portrayal of the well endowed 16 year olds, may be competing, it should not be assumed that they are underage.

Moreover, you prediction adds nothing to the present argument, it is a deriative of your initial assumption. It is a nice hypothesis, but currently does not add to your argument.

Also, your final comment implies that China can, therefore China will. That is similar to proposing that all women are prostitutes, because all women can be prostitutes. It is entirely fallicious