Youth trumps experience in China's rise to Olympic gold

Question: Why would China use underage gymnasts at the Olympics?

Answer: Alicia Sacramone.

Remember poor Alicia?

She's the U.S. gymnast who fell off the balance beam and then wiped out on her floor routine, essentially costing the American women the gold medal in the team competition a few nights ago in Beijing.

Sacramone is a smart, well-traveled 20-year-old veteran gymnast who goes to Brown University in her spare time.

Not bad credentials.

But apparently, while experience like Sacramone's can be the key to upward mobility in the job world, it can be one heck of a glass ceiling in gymnastics.

The Chinese women's gymnastics team, which won the gold medal in the team competition, is being accused of busting through that ceiling by using gymnasts who are too young.

The minimum age for Olympic gymnastics competitions is 16. And it's not a stretch to say that some of the girls on the Chinese team - particularly He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yillin - didn't look old enough to have all of their permanent teeth, let alone their drivers' licenses.

Some experts have pegged some of the Chinese as being as young as 12 or 13.

"What everyone is saying is true. It's not speculation that they're too young, they are too young," said Mary Joe Roehrig, the co-owner and head coach at Spring Hill Gymnastics in Elgin. "There's documentation all over the place (on the Internet). And, I mean, those kids competed as juniors just two years ago. There's no way they're old enough.

"The end result may be that their medals get taken away and they'll bump everyone up a level."

That would give gold to the Americans and Sacramone - ironic, because the Chinese seemed to believe they couldn't win with an "over-the-hill" gymnast like her.

One of the biggest perceived advantages of using younger girls is that they've got such a different frame of reference than someone like Sacramone.

In other words, a veteran like Sacramone might feel the weight of an Olympic moment much more than someone who has little to compare it to.

And a veteran like Sacramone might not be as carefree and as fearless either, which can cause debilitating nerves - like the ones she showed during the team competition.

"I absolutely believe that," said Bill Williamson, general manager of Midwest Elite Gymnastics Academy in Elgin. "There are some physical differences that can give younger girls an advantage in gymnastics _ like younger girls are lighter and thinner.

"But I think the biggest thing is the mental part of it. Younger girls don't know any better about what to fear or be worried about because they haven't been in it long enough. They don't always realize that some of the moves they do could potentially be dangerous. They're more moldable in that way. You can get them to do things that girls who are older, who have maybe seen some injuries or experienced injuries themselves, would think twice about. Younger girls don't know enough to be afraid."

But younger girls also haven't lived enough to be fully developed.

And that's the other problem with putting underage girls on an Olympic stage.

Not only is it cheating, the physical demands to compete at that level are taxing for the growing body. Sometimes too taxing.

"If their stomachs aren't strong enough yet, their lower backs suffer," Roehrig said. "If they land with a little kink because they're still a little loose in their knees, that's a lower lumbar injury. You've got kids who are developing their muscles at a faster rate than their bones. It's not good.

"The reason the age minimum went in in the first place was because you had girls getting physically hammered at such a young age."

Let's hope that if the Chinese are cheating, the hammer comes down on them next.

A gold medal for the Americans would be nice, but so would a reprieve for all the (too) young Olympic hopefuls in China.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com