Age of gymnasts have NOT GOTTEN YOUNGER. They have gotten older, and even those at 15/16 are developing more because they are trained to peak later due to age restrictions. Please look at the difference between the 1992 Olympic Team - of any of the top three nations - and the difference between the girls on the teams in Athens and in Beijing - there is a huge difference in development and the average age is higher than it used to b e.

The Soviets set a standard with young girls that stayed looking girlish due to the intense training (and who knows what else) and everyone else had to try and copy them to meet that standard. Once the soviets were out of the picture, girls started getting gradually more "normal" looking. If you don't believe me, just YouTube competitions from the 80's and early nineties and then look at the Romanians and Russians and USA gymnasts of today. Completely different body types, and the average age of the competitors is higher.

So Salon, please hire someone knows something about the current trend and is not bitterly stuck in her past and has had blinders on regarding the positive development of our sport over the last decade.

competed in this sport to understand how your body and mind have to be in perfect sync in order to be competitive in gymnastics.

A smaller, thinner, more compact frame is easier to manuever around either on equipment or the floor,than a larger, heavier one. Now, that being said, it's difficult to stop puberty and some of the things that genetics might also deal a young woman. It was no accident that gymnastics for females would find the sport going younger and younger in order to generate the incredible human machines that we've grown accustomed to seeing.

Look at ice skating. It's the same thing.

The problem is not that girls can succeed at gymnastics, it's that older women cannot. If someone claims that "women above the age of 20 cannot compete in gymnastics", it is hardly relevant to the argument at all whether Harvard or MIT admits students of the age of 14. Harvard and MIT have plenty of adult students, too!

It is not a question of strength or speed, FWIW. Older women are stronger and faster. It's a question of flexibility.

A different point - somebody claimed "gymnasts are getting younger". Actually, from a practical standpoint, they are getting older. After Nadia Comaneci broke through at Montreal in 1976 at the age of 14, the sport skewed very young, with 14-15 year olds being the norm until the more recent reforms kicked in.

And the underlying question is whether society really wants young girls to be spending all of the very young years pursuing a sport to the exclusion of all other activities before they can develop any sense of independence. The 14-year old at Harvard will get an education that lasts a lifetime. The 16-year old gymnast who doesn't get a medal is pretty much washed up before the age of 20. I'm quite comfortable with adults pursuing short-lived career paths, but it seems weird when the entire career ends with puberty.

I think this article is perhaps focused on the wrong element here. Or at least ignorant of the sport. This is akin to asking why sprinters are muscular, wrestlers have insanely low body fat, or basketball players tall. What the author really wants to ask is, by analogy, why are there more swingmen in basketball than dominant centers? But the fact remains that the player will still be tall.

The fact of the matter is every sport has an age range and physicality which are more conducive to excellence in it's particular physical demands. Gymnastics is a sport based on "olympian" levels of flexibility, power-to-weight ratio, balance, and agility. And the ability to do those things in the extreme inevitably leads to smaller powerful people with exceptional flexibility. A teenager is more likely to have that than an older athlete. Generally flexibility and power/weight will decrease as the athlete fills out and grows older. Women tend to mature sooner so their particular window is sooner. Moreover, the scoring system in gymnastics has compulsory requirements that competitors must complete a certain number of elements in difficulty ratings from A-G or A-F for women and men respectively. The more difficult maneuvers receive more points for perfect execution. So for an athlete to reach the elite level (typically combined event scores in the mid to upper teens) they need a lot of high difficulty elements (multiple spins or flips for example). Unfortunately spinning a 5'6 120 frame requires more force than a 4'8 85lb one. Consequently, the way you tend to see older and larger athletes (like Svetlana Boguinskaya or Svetlana Khorkina) staying competitive is by adding more of the subjective "aesthetic" and "artistic" qualities.

Now, if you are committed to changing the physicality of the athletes you can always change the rules. To return to the NBA analogy, when Wilt and other big men dominated the game, the lane was widened to reduce their influence. More recently rules were changed to limit the amount of physical play on the perimeter. This lead to the modern game where guards and "swingmen" dominate.

If you want the sport to de-emphasize skills that come more naturally to a smaller younger athlete, the thing to do is change the scoring system. But be prepared for it to look a lot more like rhythmic gymnastics. The irony of course is the current system was created specifically to address what the author is at least explicitly talking about. That is the emphasis on appearance and aesthetics over technical and more objective skills. That is, more "better" and less "prettier."

As for the dress and "art" elements of the sport I think the article's author can address them better than I.

Especially since most elite gymnists start out as toddlers. I took my first gymnastic class (tumbling) at the tender age of 2 1/2. I did it until I was 5. The coach told my mom I'd never make it past tumbling because they assumed I'd be tall like her (she's 5'9". I'm only 5'4") AND I already had a rather large posterior that made it hard for me to do any of the easy tricks the other kids could do. I pretty much stopped a back hand walk overs. I couldn't even do a flip.

But, anyhoo, just think about it; You've been training non-stop since you were 5 or 6 years old (before that, its mostly playing around doing handstands and rolls and what not.) By the time you're in your twenties, your body is tired. And probably in constant pain from all of the injuries you've had during the years.

Unlike other sports, I don't think the juice really gives you any edge, other than allowing you to compete injured. You don't want to be bulkier in gymnastics; the judges don't like it.

So basically, the only edge out there is to be really young. I'm fine with it, personally, especially considering the kind of sacrifices those young girls make to be the best. So what if you have to retire at 18. You've earned it.