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ATLANTA -- A new groomed-for-stardom sprite, 14-year-old Dominique Moceanu, will flip and bounce her way across Olympic TV screens this week. If you enjoy pixie gymnasts, don't miss her, because the littlest ones will be getting bigger next time.
Concerns about injury, pressure and what one critic calls "legal, even celebrated, child abuse" have finally led officials to look hard at gymnastics. One result: The Olympic minimum age is rising.
For untold numbers of youngsters across America and around the world, organized gymnastics is fun, confidence-building, a healthy recreation.
But even Tom Cook, whose Atlanta School of Gymnastics has trained hundreds of kids over the years, including future Olympians, acknowledges the youngest can sometimes be pushed too far, too fast into the elite ranks.
Their light weight and flexible bodies give them an edge. And Cook said there's another attraction for an over-eager coach.
"When you're doing things that require a tremendous amount of courage, it's easier to
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get a child to do it than someone more mature with more concern about injuries and such things," he said.
The critic who exposed many "such things" is San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Joan Ryan, in her book "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes."
Ryan's litany of what she found among too many youthful "elite" gymnasts: eating disorders, weakened bones, stunted growth, debilitating injuries, damaged psyches.
She reports on a girl who starved herself to death to achieve the perfect "weightless" gymnast's body; one who wound up in a psychiatric hospital; girls who broke their necks; one who tried suicide; one who was sexually abused by her coach.
Ryan's and other horror stories spurred action last year, when the International Gymnastics Federation decreed that, beginning with the 2000 Sydney Games, girl gymnasts must turn 16 in the Olympic year to qualify. The age is now 15.
Moceanu, whose bubbly style is sure to win viewers' hearts, if not a medal, recently went through some pressure-filled weeks herself because of an injury.
The girl promoted as the latest in a line of princesses of the balance beam going back to Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton suffered a stress fracture in her right shin.
"It's bearable," she said last week.
Young Dominique is trained by legendary coach Bela Karolyi, the man who turned both Comaneci, in Romania, and Retton, in America, into superstars.
She is the California-born daughter of emigre Romanian gymnasts, including a father who starred in national competitions but never an Olympics. The parents began testing her abilities at age 3, and by age 9 had talked Karolyi into taking her on, moving to Texas to be near the coach.
Parental ambition -- not the child's -- is often the force behind the drive to elite status, psychologists say.
"A lot of times we find the typical stage mother, who feels unfulfilled, frustrated and who is going, by God, to live through her child," said Robert Heckel, a University of South Carolina sports psychologist who works with child athletes.
Some kids find a way out, he said, by failing -- purposely, if sometimes subconsciously -- at some skill in their specialty.
Gymnastics doesn't have the only problems. A 14-year-old U.S. female swimming star tested positive for steroid use last year and was suspended. "Burnout" cases are well-known among teen-aged women in the top ranks of tennis and ice skating.
The USA Gymnastics organization is looking for ways to help. Its new Athletic Wellness Program counsels parents, coaches and gymnasts on proper nutrition and other concerns.
But not everyone sees serious problems -- or accepts hiking up the age.
"We have members who comment that they feel if athletes are able to compete on a level with the top, older athletes, they should be able to do so," said Luan Peszek, a USA Gymnastics spokeswoman.
Karolyi, for one, is known to be unhappy with the new age level.
But the momentum for change may be building at high levels.
The International Gymnastics Federation's medical chief, Dr. Michel L'Eglise, says it's wrong to expect junior gymnasts to perform the difficult, risky exercises older athletes do.
"The rules should impose limits on these youngsters," he said, "placing emphasis on performance quality rather than on unnecessary risks."
And author Ryan says raising the age was only a minimal step in the right direction.
"They have to look at the judging, at what's valued in this sport, and make changes," she said, "so there can be women in 'women's gymnastics' again."
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