How is being underage "cheating" in Olympic gymnastics ?

Question

***If you are gonna politicize this question, don't bother answering***

i.e. He Kexin

Isn't being underage giving an advantage to Nastia? since being younger = less physically/mentally strong?

Answer 1

the younger you are the more flexible and aerial you are. being young is especially effective in gymanstics.

Answer 2

The rules state you have to be at least 16 years of age to compete...if you don't follow the rules you are cheating...RIGHT? O_o

Answer 3

The argument point they use is not experience or bad for children etc.

It is bcos gymnast who is under 16 is: more flexible, less frighten and less worry during competition. That's why they can perform better.

anyway. If no proof, it is better not to accuse others. However, being honest is very important too.

Answer 4

Exactly, being underage is definitely NOT cheating, although according health reasons it might be wiser for gymnast to have an age limit. Being young is not equivalent to cheating, theres no additional age advantage there, the only concern is that gymnastics might be harmful if practiced at a young age.

Anyway, setting an age limit only means they can COMPETE below 16 but i doesn't mean they can't undergo the same training or do it at home it.... Most top gymnasts have already began training when they are toddlers. Shawn "cutie" Johnson was sent to learn gymnastics when she was 3 when she "climbed out of her crib" and obviously she's been training since then to be a top notch gymnast.

This rule is full of loopholes, If there are any real health issues, chances are skeletal damage would have been done when they are 6 or 7... My point is, if it is so bad for children they should let kids do gymnastics only AFTER they are more or less physically mature, which means banning gymnastics for people under 14. Otherwise there is no point setting an age limit when kids are already training since they are 3 or 7 or 13....

Answer 5

well underaged girls tend to be more flexible. Also they are smaller and lighter so its easier to control their body. they also have less nerves because they arent as pressured to win as the older gymnast.

Answer 6

The people insisting the prepubescent girls have a significant advantage use curious logic.  It's true that a sixteen year old girl will, on average, be a bit less flexible than a younger one, but they aren't that much less flexible, and they're certainly not weaker than a twelve year old.

Plus, a sixteen year old should have at least two years of experience and training on a fourteen year old and, though no one's much bothering to mention it, a sixteen year old should be better at spatial and visual tasks and have finer motor control than someone either prepubescent or in their early pubescence (since neurophysiological and cognitive research has established pretty darned thoroughly children just beginning puberty actually backslide on many of their cognitive and emotional abilities owing to the amount of restructuring their brains are doing).

So, the advantages younger gymnasts bring to the equation should be offset by the advantages the older gymnasts have until such time as injury and the physical decline of aging offset them, yes?

And that theory holds up pretty well if you look back at the medal winners before and after the age limit was imposed (after the 1996 Olympics).

Okay, well, we can start off with Shannon Miller and Kari Strug, both of whom were 19 when they won their gold medals at the 1996 Olympics, and there were competitors under sixteen in that Olympics, including Dominique Moceanu (who also won gold).

In 1992, the gold for the vault was split between a 15 year old and 18 year old, with the rest of the gold medalists being within a month or so of sixteen years old.

In 1988, a 19 year old won the individual all around, a 15 year old the vault, a 16 year old the uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise.

In 1984, a 16 year old won the individual all around, a 17 year old the floor, a 15 and 17 year old split the balance beam, a 16 and eighteen year old split the uneven bars...

And on it goes.  It seems age limit or not, the girls in their mid to late teens are the ones who have the performance advantage in women's gymnastics since most of the medalists in the past 24 years have been sixteen or older, only one has has been under fifteen years old, and all of the fifteen year olds were within a matter of days or a few weeks of their sixteenth birthday.

From the medaling standpoint, the age limit simply doesn't seem to make much difference.  Throwing a fit that a fourteen year old gymnast has an unfair advantage over an older one is nonsense when you look at who's been winning the medals historically.

There has to be another reason for it, and I can tell you exactly what it is.

The physical rigors of competing gymnastically are hard on the body, and the level of training required to compete in Olympics gymnastics is absolutely punishing.  Girls under the age of sixteen subjected to that much physical stress over the long-term will not develop normally as adults.

Beyond that, the higher you go in the world of competitive gymnastics, the more complex and riskier your routines have to become to keep up with your competitors.  That means the risk of serious injury if you make a mistake on your routine increases as well.

Sixteen and eighteen year old girls are more capable of healing from a serious injury without permanent disability than a thirteen or fourteen year old girl is... plus, as I noted, the older girls will have more control, and thus be less likely to suffer catastrophic injury from making a mistake on their routine.

So, the age limit was set at sixteen.

In fact, if you go back and listen to the remarks of the man who first said the Chinese gymnasts were underage (Bela Karolyi), he didn't claim it gave the Chinese gymnats an unfair advantage.  Karolyi said at the time he thought the rule was patently stupid because anyone who was able to compete should be allowed to.  He was simply objecting because rules are rules.

From that point of view, he's right.  Rules are rules, so using a gymnast who isn't the appropriate age yet is cheating, even if her age doesn't give her an advantage.

Personally, I don't care that they were under sixteen so much as I care that Yang Yilin said she hadn't been home or seen her parents in more than a year, but I'd care about that just as much if she was over sixteen (and no matter what country she was from).

If I was one of the gymnasts who lost, the other gymnasts being too young would NOT be an objection I would bring up.  Frankly, if I was competing in the Olympics, I'd be too embarrassed to whine "but I'm getting my butt kicked by a little kid!"

Answer 7

The rules set by the IFG say you have to be 16, so by using underage children that is breaking the rules.  Breaking the rules is cheating.

Answer 8

evidently you don't believe in rules.  why is it not ok to drive if your 12 years old?  why can't you drink in a bar if your 15? why can't you serve in the military if your 16? why, why,  why. BECAUSE WE HAVE RULES.  

Answer 9

The answer is that the optimal age for a women's strength to body weight ratio is below the minimum age of 16. After pubescence the weight increases disproportionately to strength, particularly in the upper body. So when you are at or closer to the age where the ratio favors strength considerably, you have an advantage in many of the events.  

Answer 10

Yes, there are advantages and disadvantages to being younger, but once the rule is established, breaking it constitutes cheating.

As previous posters have already mentioned, the physical advantages of being younger are greater flexibility and ease of performing some tumbling, vaults etc because they are much lighter than older girls, so less muscle is required to get airborne or maintain one's position on the bars/beams. Also, balancing is easier without having to compensate for the presence of fully-developed b*****s.

This usually outweights the disadvantages- lack of experience and less mental toughness.  Nadia Comaneci was 14 when she racked up scores of 10.0 seven times during the 1976 Olympics, on her way to 3 gold medals and making "perfect 10" a household phrase.

The reason the rule was implemented (raising the minimum age to 16) was to protect the health of young athletes.  At 13-14, the skeletons of girls are not fully formed.  The concern was that stresses of Olympic competition could permanently damage their still-developing bones.

Also, regimes like the old Soviet Union, East Germany and other eastern bloc countries often took children with great athletic promise from their families at VERY young ages (even 5 years old) and placed them in state-run training programs to prepare them for future Olympic competion.  The kids had no say in the matter, their lives essentially consisted of studying and training for 12-16 hours a day- they essentially had no childhood.

So there was also the hope that raising the age limit would reduce the incentive for some governments to put children into grueling training at such early ages.

Answer 11

A pre-pubescent girl has a different center of gravity and and different body-fat ratio than a girl of 16.  Bone formation is different, metabolism is different.  Because of all of these factors, a pre-pubescent girl has a physical advantage to a girl of 16.

Furthermore, girls peak, athletically, between 12-14 years of age.  Boys peak in their late teens and early 20's.

Answer 12

because the younger gymnasts haven't really "developed" yet, they are more limber and flexible than older gymnasts. that's why you have to be 16, or turn 16 in the yr or the olympics to participate.