Lack of size, that is. The trend over the past few decades has been for shorter, lighter gymnasts, and the stars of the future could be even tinier than those at Sydney. This year, Nick Grantham of Lilleshall Sports Injury and Human Performance Centre in Shropshire examined the body profiles of top British gymnasts. Being short has several advantages. Grantham says that longer legs also make it harder to perform gymnastics.
Long legs are long levers.
The trend towards smaller, lighter gymnasts is being driven by the way gymnastics is scored, says Yoshi Takei at Northern Illinois University. The smaller the body, the lighter the body and the quicker the body, the easier it is to do extra somersaults or twists to get the points. Takei's views are echoed by other researchers. Over the years, gymnastics has changed quite a lot in terms of technical difficulty. Now, because of the moves that men and women are having to do to score highly, it's favouring the smaller, lighter athletes even more.