How come Olympic gymnasts look younger than they are?

Question

How come Olympic gymnasts look younger than they are?

Answer 1

To me, they DO look their age... which will soon be proven to be 14 years old for some of them.

Answer 2

Because they probably are. This topic has come up more than once so far.

Answer 3

they should past 20, well so i've heard

Answer 4

Because gymnastics delays puberty. I think there's a girl from Japan gymnastics team that is shorter than Shawn Johnson.

Answer 5

Gymnastics is usually a sport that requires shorter girls who probably won't hit puberty so hard.  

Answer 6

The extreme training supposedly stunts their growth.  The physical appearance of US Olympic female gymnastic actually changed when the Romanian(?) training master took over in the mid-70s. Partly because of how much more stringent his training style was.

Many supposedly train so hard that their menstrual cycle starts months to years later than it does in the average non-training female.

Answer 7

The amount of training and exercise they do can sometimes delay puberty so they don't have the breast development for example.  This is actually common for a lot of athletes training at that level, look at the teenage divers and swimmers, and how many of the track athletes are well-developed?  The reason the focus is on gymnasts is the spin the media puts on it.

A girl cries after falling from the beam or missing out on a medal and the commentators say how young they are and can't handle the pressure, how is this different to a track athlete crying because they tripped over a hurdle?