Older athletes (older like in the mid-late 20s or even 30s) will be stronger, faster, more disciplined, more experienced, than their 14-16 year equivalents. Is it just flexibility? There are circus contortionists and yoga enthusiasts that are incredibly flexible into their 30s or later.
I can’t think of any trait unique to gymnastics that other sports don’t also require to explain why gymnasts are so dang young, particularly the women’s. Men’s gymnastics seems to have a much older average age.
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Women’s gymnastics used to be about grace and ballet, and had an idealized image of an anorexic 15-year-old. When they brought in open-ended scoring, the focus shifted more towards strength and athleticism. If you watch the 2012 and 2016 US women’s teams, they entirely ignore the choreography, and just win by jumping higher than everyone else. This is also when women’s gymnasts started to look like scaled down football players. The change in focus from gracefulness to athleticism also has made women’s gymnasts much older. Women are now competing into their mid to late twenties, the same way that men are. If you go back to highlights from the 96 Olympics, and then watch the current games, it is striking to see just how much bigger modern gymnasts are.
Gymnasts, particularly woman gymnasts, are more judged for the elegance and technical complexity of their routines over raw strength and power. Such routines, while insanely hard on the body, are also insanely risky. One bad fall, and you’ve got a career ending injury. In other words, most gymnasts could probably be completive into their mid to late twenties. But so many get injured badly enough or get so many cumulative injuries that they’re forced to retire early.
The sport takes a beating on your body that is completely unsustainable long term. I did it for 12 years and then coached for 2, I’m 30 now and I feel like my joints are trashed and frankly they have been since my mid teen years. The injuries just never stop
I don’t know that athletes in their late twenties and thirties *are* stronger and faster. I’ve really only ever known age to be an advantage in sports where overall size is an advantage, like football. Younger people are more flexible, have more stamina, and have less fear. When I was younger and smaller, I also had beastly strength proportional to my size, at least in my lower body, and it never occurred to me not to jump and climb on things.
In gymnastics specifically, small size is also a bonus. Teenagers are smaller than adults.
It may be that gymnastics is a sport that’s very hard to stay in competitively until you’re 30, while you can stay in other sports for longer.
Post pubescent women have a tremendous moment of inertia disadvantage due to adult female physiology (big hips, big breasts) compared to girls and boys. Meanwhile, post pubescent men keep the same advantages as their boyhood selves (narrow hips, male breasts) and pick up a tremendous advantage in relative strength, particularly in their upper body.
You may notice that elite women gymnasts tend to be narrower in the hips, have smaller breasts, and be of shorter height than what you might think of as the typical form of a woman (elite athletic tone not withstanding). This is not a coincidence. It is dramatically advantageous to have these physical features in gymnastics as it makes your ability to rotate and balance much more efficient in terms of the energy and torque demands.
Moreover, having specific and atypical bodily features isn’t unique to gymnastics. Being at physiological extremes in one way or another is typical in all elite sports. Elite basketball players are obnoxiously tall and have overly large wingspans. Elite baseball players have the eyesight of hawks. Elite swimmers have their height heavily concentrated in their torsos, making them more boat like. Elite weightlifters also tend to have smaller limbs and larger bodies. Elite runners are the opposite, having their height concentrated in their legs with much smaller torsos.
Strength to weight ratio.
Young people have lower body weight, which makes it easier to lift yourself into gymnastic motions. As people get older and larger, their weight increases faster than their strength does.
A few other comparisons to look at:
* Simone Biles has a small size which could trick many people into thinking she is much younger.
* A male gymnast gains more strength by aging from 14-22 than a girl does, so it’s not as advantageous to be young.
* In bicycle racing, the athletes who are best at riding up mountains and hills are the ones with a high power to weight ratio, so they also have body size closer to a child.
It’s body size, being smaller means better strength to weight ratio, which is an advantage.
Back in 2008 the Chinese Women’s team of all “15 and up” looked like this.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/scandal-of-the-ages-docum_b_118842
1) moment of inertia- smaller bodies are easier to rotate (and this is R-squared)
2) children are fearless. They don’t know yet how much damage may occur and how much pain it would be if they fail a difficult element badly.
when you’re young you’re basically made out of rubber, your body can handle a lot more abuse than it can when you get older. as you age, that abuse tends to add up, your joints get damaged and you can’t do as much anymore. contortion/yoga is not a high-impact activity like gymnastics is, that’s like the difference between stretching every day and jumping from the second story of a building every day.
that said, there’s a gymnast who’s the only woman to compete in 8 Olympics and one of the oldest to win a medal. she’s also one of the few that’s competed for like 3 or 4 different teams/countries.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oksana_Chusovitina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oksana_Chusovitina)
“Flexibility” is another way of saying “tolerance before trauma sets in”. Now think about how long it takes an adult to heal joint trauma. Contrast with children. Figure out when/where the tipping point is, index with pubescent muscle mass increase. This is your answer.
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