Age Rule Changes the Shape of a Sport

When you watch the women’s gymnastics competition at the 2000 Olympics, there will be a surprise.

Actual women.

Women with curves, with hips and breasts. Women taller than 5 feet and heavier than a piece of cotton. Women who are stronger but not as flexible, women who can vault higher but might not be able to do so many back somersaults on the balance beam.

After the 1996 Olympics, the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) instituted age requirements. No one younger than 16 can compete in these Olympics. Dominique Moceanu, who had been a magazine cover girl four years ago, who had been a national champion at 13 in 1995 while she clutched teddy bears, would not, under similar circumstances, be allowed to compete at Sydney.

Instead, the 2000 U.S. women’s team, which was announced Sunday night at FleetCenter, will include a 23-year-old Broadway performer (Dominique Dawes) and a 22-year-old premed student (Amy Chow). The youngest is 17-year-old Morgan White. Jamie Dantzscher is 18, Kristen Maloney 19, Elise Ray 18. High school is over for everybody but Morgan. College is practically over for Dawes and Chow.

Moceanu, who tried out for the 2000 team but pulled out because of a knee injury Wednesday, 10 inches and gained nearly 20 pounds since 1996. If the age rule hadn’t changed, Moceanu said: “I wouldn’t have tried for this team. I don’t think I would have had a chance.”

Shannon Miller, a 23-year-old college student and wife and a seven-time Olympic medalist, tried for this team too but couldn’t complete the competition Sunday night and was not named to the team. Even five years ago Miller wouldn’t have attempted this comeback. As she had said earlier: “People thought I was crazy to try this four years ago when I was 19. I was considered old then. But things have changed and it’s a different attitude now. I think people don’t count us out just because we’re not 15.”

Bela Karolyi, the U.S. team coordinator and the world’s most charismatic and successful women’s coach, is not happy about the new rule.

He sees discrimination. He sees a 14-year-old from Pennsylvania named Krystal Uzelac who, with her scores at junior nationals, would have finished third at senior nationals, and he wants Uzelac, a tiny figurine of a girl, on this team.

“We take away the dreams of the young ones, and we drive them from the sport,” Karolyi says. “Why is that? What is the point? Why should the little ones not be able to show what they do?”

But others, such as Bob Colarossi, president of USA Gymnastics, think the age rule is good. “It allows girls to become more mature,” Colarossi says, “and more ready to handle the pressures if they are 16 or 17.”

It was Olga Korbut who ushered in the age of the baby gymnasts.

At the 1972 Olympics, Korbut was a 17-year-old from the Soviet Union. She had a big smile and pigtails tied with ribbons. She was younger than most of the other gymnasts. She had rosy cheeks, and she was fearless.

Korbut also did an amazing back somersault on the balance beam, something only one other woman had done. Korbut was described, among other ways, as “a pixie.” There once were 25-year-old champions. After Korbut, adult women didn’t have a place.

Four years later Nadia Comaneci continued the trend. She was 14 years old, a Romanian who had personality-plus in a tiny, tiny package. Comaneci became the first woman to score a perfect 10 (on the uneven bars). She had a child’s exuberance and a child’s body and as soon as those Olympics were over, thousands of little American girls came to gyms around the country. They wanted to be like Nadia, a delicate dancer on the balance beam, a petite pixie as she tumbled across the floor.

By 1984 the U.S. had its own pixie.

If that word seems patronizing, it was also appropriate.

Mary Lou Retton was the star of the 1984 Olympics, nerveless and strong as stone but so young and small she was a pixie. Karolyi had coached Comaneci. Retton was next. The coach made it clear. He liked his gymnasts mentally tough and physically strong, but most of all he liked them tiny.

“Bela can tell if I’ve gained an ounce,” Kim Zmeskal, Karolyi’s first U.S. world champion, once said.

And Karolyi still likes his gymnasts petite. He is not happy with the new age rule that is changing the face, and shape, of gymnastics.

Few have forgotten Karolyi carrying the injured Kerri Strug, with her badly sprained ankle, onto the award podium in the 1996 Olympics. Strug, with her squeaky voice and pint-sized body, was the lasting photo of Atlanta.

Women’s gymnastics grew to be, with track and field, the most popular of the Summer Olympic sports on television. The girls were young, 14 or 15, tiny and perky.

Viewers loved their smiles and ponytails, loved how they could role into miniature balls, twirling faster, leaper higher, tumbling ever quicker because they were so small. Most were no more than 4 feet 10, weighed little more than 75 pounds.

They were not adults. How could they be? It would be impossible to do their incredible tricks if they had women’s figures. In general, the little pixies were retired from their sport by the time they were 16 or 17. Women’s gymnastics did not have a place for women.

It will be interesting now to see if Olympic TV viewers, who are largely women, like this new crop.

“Yes, they will look different,” says Steve Nunno, who is Miller’s coach.

Nunno brought Miller to the 1992 Olympics, a 15-year-old who could barely lift herself over the vault but who could do amazing tumbling passes of speed and flexibility which drew gasps from the crowd.

This 23-year-old Miller couldn’t do the same tumbling passes. “You concede some differences,” Nunno says, “but some things are better. Shannon is a much stronger vaulter.”

Miller, Moceanu and Dawes, another veteran of the 1996 team, all say they are better gymnasts than they were four years ago. Miller and Dawes were also both on the 1992 team.

“There’s no comparison,” Miller said, “about how much harder things I can do now.”

Miller said this Friday. On Sunday, Miller, on her first event of the final evening of the Olympic trials, crumpled to the mat on her vault landing. She was in pain and in tears. Nunno persuaded her to do her second vault, but Miller could barely stand on the landing again and withdrew from the competition.

She had suffered a hairline fracture in her leg shortly after beginning a comeback in January. Nunno and Mary Lee Tracy, who coached three of the 14 gymnasts at the trials, are both certain that the older, bigger bodies are no more prone to injuries then the preadolescent bodies of 14-year-olds.

“The equipment is so much better now,” Nunno says. “The padding on the floor, the mats. I think girls can compete much longer with much less stress on their bodies.”

“I don’t think having a bigger body has anything to do with injuries,” Tracy said. But Moceanu ended up with bone chips in her knee.

In fact, of the five members of the 1996 team who originally began this quest for the 2000 team, only Chow and Dawes completed the process. Jaycie Phelps also dropped out because of an injury.

Karolyi was brought in to choose the 2000 team after the U.S. finished sixth at the 1999 world championships. There might be age limits, but Karolyi still likes his gymnasts pixielike. He sang the praises all month of White and Vanessa Atler, the two smallest girls trying out for the 2000 Olympics. If Atler hadn’t self-destructed over the two nights of competing at FleetCenter, Karolyi might have put her on the team as well.

“It is fine for the older ones to come back,” Karolyi says, “and it doesn’t surprise me. They can make money now from tours and endorsements. But why take away from the younger ones? Let them all be here and fight it out on the floor.”