WAG Chinese longevity

[Deleted member 26744]

Gymnasts are getting older and having much longer careers, but why does this not seem to be true in China? I know they have a very intense training program that begins at extremely young ages. Do they lose the joy of gymnastics because of this?

 

[Agymnast]

To me it seems like they have an extremely intense program (perhaps more like the Marta era). Remember gymnasts had shorter careers until 5 yrs ago!

 

[gymgal]

The women Chinese Olympic team was made up of 17-21 yr olds, very similar to the US.

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Before we speculate as to why this may be, can we confirm whether this is actually accurate? I'd be curious to see average/median ages of Olympic teams from various countries, but I don't know where to actually look that up.

 

[Carabistouille]

I did it using data from the Olympics website. I used only the year of birth, so age is measured in "gymnastics years" (i.e. a december born 2000 gymnast would be 21).
Those are the team who qualified to EF.

ROC : 24 + 16 + 21 + 16 => 19,25
USA : 24 + 20 + 18 + 19 => 20,25
GB : 17 + 17 + 20 + 18 => 18
Italy : 18 + 18 + 31 + 20 => 21,75
Japan : 21 + 23 + 25 + 22 => 22,75
France : 21 + 21 + 18 + 18 => 19,5
China : 21 + 17 + 21 + 18 => 19,25
Belgium : 20 + 21 + 17 + 16 => 18,5

Soooo, no. Not supported by data at all.

Edit : Since there are only 4 persons on each team, this has to be taken with a grain of salt, because one older/younger gymnast can make a rather big difference in the average.
You would have to use many competitions over many years to get something statistically relevant about a program.

 

[Deleted member 26744]

I mean how long the gymnast stays competing internationally for their country.

 

[RTT2]

I mean how long the gymnast stays competing internationally for their country.

What research have you done on the topic? Is this just based on your feelings after watching over the last week?

 

[Deleted member 26744]

I hadn't done any research on it. It just seemed that way to me for some reason. Maybe I am wrong. I know Cheng Fei had a long career and Liu Xuan was a double Olympian. I just couldn't think of somebody that had been around for a long time for the Chinese Women (like Svetlana Khorkina, Vanessa Ferrari, Shannon Miller).

 

[Carabistouille]

Fan Yilin (individual gymnast) is a double olympian. Lu Yufei and Zhang Jin were both competing for China in 2016 but did not make the Rio team.

Every single member of the 2016 Olympic team competed at Chinese nationals in 2021. Shang Chunsong, who was competing for China in 2012 (made Pan Ams but not Olympics), is still representing her province at nationals and made FX (I think ?) final.
It certainly does not look like burnt out gymnasts to me.

 

[Aussie_coach]

It could also be related to bigger population. Here in Australia they seem to have longer international careers.

This seems to be because of our low population we have a very small pool of international gymnasts. We don’t have droves and droves of younger ones coming up to push them out of their place.

With China’s population, they must have a lot.

 

[Deleted member 26744]

Okay I could very well be wrong. Aussie, a large population of children started very young might be a factor if there's truth to it.

 

[novagymmom]

ROC : 24 + 16 + 21 + 16 => 19,25
USA : 24 + 20 + 18 + 19 => 20,25
GB : 17 + 17 + 20 + 18 => 18
Italy : 18 + 18 + 31 + 20 => 21,75
Japan : 21 + 23 + 25 + 22 => 22,75
France : 21 + 21 + 18 + 18 => 19,5
China : 21 + 17 + 21 + 18 => 19,25
Belgium : 20 + 21 + 17 + 16 => 18,5

This is so interesting! So refreshing to see so many WOMEN doing women's gymnastics instead of just young girls. Awesome!!