| 13. Originally published in ‘Prosport’ on April 12, 2002, this article and interview details the consequences of age fraud in relationship to the gymnast and her health. Is it worth sacrificing the children for medals?! The age falsification of gymnasts isn't a proof of patriotism but an attempt on their health. The gymnasts whose age have been forged, and who have been put to train and to compete as seniors, have major health problems now! For instance, Gina Gogean, about whom Prosport discovered the authentic birth certificate, had to sustain a difficult operation on her back that hardly anyone knew about. In the last decade, many Romanian gymnasts have serious medical problems, even though they have hardly passed the age of 20! In Romania, gymnastics starts at an early age, at 6, when the body of young athletes is far from developed. Professor doctor Ioan Dragan, former director of the National Sport Medicine Institute, reveals what the consequences of the efforts (training) on a gymnast's body are. Which areas are mostly affected and how all of this affects them after early retirement. Q: Mr. Dragan, how dangerous is gymnastics for the health of athletes? A: It's difficult, if not impossible, to find out what the limit is when the training becomes harmful. The biggest majority of the problems appear down the road, especially to the spine, like Alexandra Marinescu's case. Q: How much does it count, at which age they start gymnastics? A: We start at an early age, around 6 years old. At when, the bones are far from being developed. The same with the body at this age. Later on, the girls begin to run, to jump. The spine starts to subside, the same happens with the shin and the thighbone. We speed up the training at the age of 12, when the gymnasts are ready to compete at the Junior Europeans. Before they introduced the age limit, at 14 years, they were ready to go to the Olympics. There's even a supposition that because of the effort, the cartilage 'shuts down' and the gymnasts stop growing. This early beginning has an ill-fated influence. It obliges them to end their career earlier. In other countries, the age when they start gymnastics is 8-10. These gymnasts carry on longer but they don't have the same results. Q: What other problems can appear? A: The puberty of these girls is much later than the average girls in the country, whose puberty begins at 13-14. There are cases of no menstrual cycle until 17-18. This is due to the hormonal stress, the physical effort and the mental pressure. Moreover, the traces left from the early childhood years shows most of all on the muscular movement system. Q: Does it depend on the gymnast? A: Sure. Before the Olympics in Moscow, Nadia had a fracture in the 4th lumbar vertebra, you could stick your finger in, that's how big it was. She went to the gym, trained, but she didn't do any landings. With infiltration, heat treatment, and looking after herself, in 2 weeks she was ok. Q: How do the training methods influence the appearance of the health problems? A: We have invented a concept: training with pain. To be able to beat the ones around you, you have to do something extra. So the girls train and they compete even though they feel pain in different parts of their body. After a while, the body gets used to it. It's true, however, that the physical pain always hides a disorder, that, left untreated, can give a lot more serious problems. In this campaign of war, we have done a lot of things that you wouldn't resort to in normal conditions. Bela Karoly: "The quality and intensity of the training has grown. More worrying is that because of the extra difficulty of the elements, the risk of accidents has increased." Simona Amanar: "For 6 years, I have trained with a torn muscle, that still gives me problems even now, mostly when I have my athletic classes. " Lavinia Milosovici: "The gymnasts of today don't resist as much as we did, they are more sensitive. Anyway, you can't do gymnastics by half." Rodica Dunca: "Everybody knows that your career is over at the age of 18." Maria Simionescu (former international judge): "The most effected parts are the shins and knees, but the back by stretching. Repeatedly stretching of the muscles in the same places, feet, arms and shoulders, can take you out of gymnastics." Why did they increase the age limit? The age limit in gymnastics has changed twice: once from 14 to 15 in the 80s and from 15 to 16 in 1997. The American Jackie Fie, the president of the Technical Committee of the FIG, says that these changes were established because of the skeleton of young gymnasts. "The period that gymnasts are in the peak of their career coincides with the age that they are still growing and the cartilage isn't completely structured yet. Their joints are also fragile. A year more to develop the bone structure is better." Because of this young age, the gymnasts suffer from stress fractures, a lot of elbow and wrists injuries, scoliosis or spondilosis. Another problem is a food disorder. An American study has revealed that the gymnasts of today weigh 9 kilos less than those of 20 years ago. In a lot of cases, the dieting can lead to anorexia or bulimia. |