New to the gymnastics world, I grew up riding so I find myself Googling a lot of things. Couldn't an answer for this one though so I thought I would ask here as y'all seem very knowledable.
We've been watching the US Championships over the weekend and I noticed that a lot of the male gymnast seem to be part of a college team and wearing their team jersey. However, the ladies are all still in high school.
Does anyone know why this is?
Because MAG and WAG are different in several key ways, and because men and women develop differently in several key ways.
MAG is a sport that (among many other things) tests the extremes of upper body strength in the adult male body. Males tend to start puberty later than females and to not achieve a fully mature male body until their early 20s. Even all-around gymnasts (who look so much "smaller" on TV than, say, a ring specialist) are in fact, massive in their upper body. They must reach their fully developed upper body strength to be competitive at the top levels in all events. This is why a large part of the struggle for MAG is keeping boys in the sport through puberty, because it is such a game changer, but in a way that is different for girls. Puberty is hard to go through for athletes of both sexes, but ultimately the changes that occur in males make the adult male gymnast more likely to develop huge skills.
Females on the other hand generally enter and exit puberty earlier than males, and the biological changes for a maturing woman (increasing body fat, widening of the hips, getting taller) are all things that tend to decrease performance in gymnastics. Interestingly but logically, according to one recent study I found, one factor in success for elite WAG gymnasts is a tendency to mature later than average. Presumably, they have time to develop great skills and strength before their body changes. For men, it may be that maturing earlier would be helpful, at least for longevity in the sport (meaning they can be really good while younger.)
There have also been many changes to WAG events and expected skills and competition rules over the last several decades and these have served (mostly) to lower the average age of elite WAG gymnasts.
Both sexes are in a race against time in the fact that extreme training hours start so early and wears so on the body. So being long lived in the upper levels of competition for either men or women is pretty rare and special.
There are of course elite gymnasts of both sexes who are older, even into their 30’s and 40’s. But they are event specialists. And they are notable because they are so unusual.
