(bloomberg) The International Olympic Committee has asked gymnastics' ruling body to ``look further'' into whether some members of the gold-winning Chinese women's team were too young to compete at the Beijing Games. ``We decided to look at it further,'' Sandrine Tonge, a spokeswoman for the IOC, said by phone today. ``It's not an official investigation.'' Doubts about the ages of He Kexin and other members of the Chinese team were raised following Chinese media reports from last year that, if accurate, would indicate they were younger than the 16-year-old requirement for competing in Olympic gymnastics. He was listed as 13 years old in a Nov. 3, 2007, report by the state-run Xinhua News Agency. The Chinese last week defeated the Americans to win the team competition. Yang Yang, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Olympic Committee, said it hadn't received any notice from the IOC regarding the situation and declined to comment on the gymnasts' ages. Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympics organizing committee, also declined to comment. Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC's medical commission, said Aug. 15 that there was no reason to believe that the ages of the Chinese gymnasts had been manipulated. The Beijing Olympic organizing committee lists He's birthday as Jan. 1, 1992, which would make her 16 years old.

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