Hacker Hunts for Facts About Gymnasts' Ages

Mike Walker does not care much about gymnastics, and he did not pay much attention to the Olympics.

But when he heard stories about electronic records reportedly bearing the disputed ages of Chinese gymnasts vanishing from the Internet, he saw an opportunity to test his computer hacking skills.

"I didn't get excited until I read about documents being available and then blocked," said Walker, a 32-year-old computer security specialist who lives near Washington. "That set all kinds of alarm bells in my head in terms of going and finding records. It is something I like doing."

After about three days of on-and-off cyber-sleuthing last week, Walker found copies of a spreadsheet that had previously been posted on a Chinese government Web site. It listed the age of the Chinese gold-medal gymnast He Kexin as 14, not 16, as it says on her passport.

Walker promptly started a blog, and his first post was titled "Hack the Olympics!" It included copies of his find and details of how he uncovered the information. The attention his post garnered - it received a total of 1,500 comments on his blog and on the technology news site Slashdot -- helped revive the debate over whether He, who won an individual gold medal on the uneven bars, and other Chinese gymnasts were old enough to participate in the Olympics.

Since 1997, rules have required that a gymnast turn 16 in the year of the Olympics to compete in those Games.

Chinese officials have insisted that all the country's gymnasts were the appropriate age. On Sunday, they blamed a paperwork error for the conflicting records of He's age. The International Olympic Committee has asked the international gymnastics federation to investigate.