Chinese gymnast He Kexin is not as old as she claims to be. Regardless, she has a gold medal.

With the amount of press coverage this “scandal” is getting, you would think no one has ever cheated in the Olympics before. They have, and they will again.

Unlike real scandals where athletes have an unfair advantage, the Chinese gymnasts competed on a level playing field with the other countries they beat. Age? It doesn’t matter.

It wasn’t like a 40-year-old got whipped by a 14-year-old. It was a 14-year-old beating a bunch of 16-year-olds, barely.

What about the rules? Insignificant, in this case.

What this “scandal” is really about is the U.S. being poor losers. Who wants to win on a technicality anyway?

If it turns out that He Kexin is 7, she didn’t have on a special suit that made her stronger, faster or lighter. Her age didn’t give her special powers. If anything, she had less experience by a couple of years.

Being younger probably makes her smaller and lighter, but Shawn Johnson can be fit into an overhead compartment with room left for a half dozen bags.

With the constant training and weight control, He Kexin won’t look her age until she quits gymnastics and starts eating some McDonald’s – proud sponsor of the Beijing Olympics.

Puberty requires a young woman have a certain amount of body fat before it can ruin a gymnast’s career. That’s why the U.S. has girls becoming women earlier and earlier, and gymnasts are tiny, little things even at 16, 17 and 18.

BTW, the Chinese did the same aging of an athlete in 2000 in Sydney with Yang Yun, who was 14, won a bronze medal, admitted she was too young and still has a bronze medal.

Much of the evidence against He Kexin comes from newspaper reports. Newspapers get things wrong from time to time.

Officials should have been suspicious when most of the Chinese gymnasts were born in January.

These young women should be happy just to be alive in a country that has a law where parents can have only one baby – and that baby better be a boy. Because of cultural preference, millions of female babies born in China are aborted. That’s a scandal.

With how gymnastics works, they’ll just change the rules and the scoring – and it won’t make a difference. There will always be someone younger, stronger and faster who will whip up and everyone.

Let’s just hope she’s American!

U – S – A! U – S – A! U – S – A!

Whoops, got to go. There’s an “American Gladiators” rerun about to start.