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The age requirements in gymnastics are established by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) and regulate the age at which athletes are allowed to participate in senior-level competitions. In the latter half of the 20th century, a series of controversies arose with regard to gymnast ages, some of them leading to sanctions by FIG, and paving the way for the age requirements to be raised from 14 to 15 in 1981, and then to 16 in 1997. ==History of age requirements in artistic gymnastics== Prior to 1981, the minimum required age to compete in senior events sanctioned by the FIG (including the Olympic Games--was 14. The earliest champions in women's gymnastics tended to be in their 20s; most had studied ballet for years before entering the sport. Hungarian gymnast Ágnes Keleti won individual gold medals at the age of 35 at the 1956 Olympics. Larisa Latynina, the first great Soviet gymnast, won her first Olympic all-around medal at the age of 21, her second at 25 and her third at 29; she became the 1958 World Champion while pregnant with her daughter.〔("Legends: Larissa Latynina" ) ''International Gymnast,'' 2001〕 Czech gymnast Věra Čáslavská, who followed Latynina to become a two-time Olympic all-around champion, was 22 before she started winning gold medals at the highest level of the sport, and won her final Olympic all-around title at the age of 26. In the 1970s, the average age of Olympic gymnastics competitors began to gradually decrease. While it was not unheard of for teenagers to compete in the 1960s — Ludmilla Tourischeva was sixteen (Born October 7, 1952) at her first Olympics in 1968 — they slowly became the norm, as difficulty in gymnastics increased. By the late 1970s, Federations occasionally requested permission to allow slightly underage athletes to compete as seniors. One such example is that of Canadian gymnast Karen Kelsall, who legally competed in the 1976 Olympics at the age of 13. At the time, gymnasts had to turn 14 by the start of the Games to be eligible. Kelsall, with her December 1962 birthday, was five months shy of the requirement but was turning 14 within the Olympic year, and was granted a special exemption by the FIG to compete.〔(Gymnastics Canada biography of Karen Kelsall )〕 Such exemptions were not automatic, however: American gymnast Tracee Talavera, who was named to the United States team for the 1979 World Championships, was deemed ineligible to compete due to her age of 12½ years.〔(List of competitive results and bio at Gymn-Forum )〕〔("Rift Over Underage Gymnasts" ) Neil Amdur, ''The New York Times,'' December 7, 1981〕 In response to the changing demands of the sport, at the 58th Congress of the FIG, held in July 1980 just before the Moscow Olympics, the minimum age was raised from 14 to 15. Under this rule, which went into effect in 1981, gymnasts were required to turn at least 15 years of age in the calendar year to compete in senior-level events.〔 This age requirement remained in place until 1997, when it was raised one more year, from 15 to 16.〔("Female gymnasts: older—and healthier?" ) ''The Physician and Sports Medicine,'' Vol. 23 No. 3, March 1997〕〔("Romanian gymnasts faked age to compete" ) BBC News/Europe, May 2, 2002〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Age requirements in gymnastics」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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