For whatever reasons, the sport of figure skating seems to suit very young girls just fine. Sonja Henie was world champion at 14. So was Tara Lipinski. At 14 Julia Lipnitskia and Kamila Valievia displayed world champion level talent.
In men, this stage of development seems to come at ages 18 or 19. Dick Button, Evgenny Plushenko, Nathan Chen, ilia Malinin and other boy wonders all won thier first world championships around those ages.
In pairs, all I can say is, three cheers for Deanna Stellato!
Let's imagine Ilia Malinin did not exist and the Russians were allowed to compete internationally. Then Arseny Fedotov and Lev Lazarev would have had good chances to win the last world championships - at age 14.
I think if the boys were as pushed to train and train and train to get the most out of their bodies before puberty hits them fully, they would also peak much earlier. But since puberty with a higher fat percentage and more birth friendly hips is not such a Damokles' sword over their head they are given much more time to develop - although the Eteri boys like Arseniy and Lev are also pushed a lot very early. But even Eteri gives boys more time and even trains adult men.
Our societal expectations have a lot to do with sexual development. But sexual development is not completely parallel to general physical development.
And yes, in pairs we can see that women like Stellato-Dudek and Aliona Savchenko are doing just fine. Most of the girls that end their career early do so because injuries are prevaling (which would be less if they were training less and with a focus on a later career) and the financial benefits of continuing aren't big. Not because their body in general is not made to skate well into their twenties. Yes, there is a time when girls jump quads much easier, but most girls never jump quads anyway and pairs girls don't. Extreme flexibility usually vanishes, but the flexibility that all the adult skaters have is absolutely enough to do great level 4 spins, so it's not like that's hindering them.
Well its a known fact that girls develop earlier than guys by at least a couple years on average. Thats what I was getting at in my earlier reply.
Also girls can get away easier with relative strength & agility but guys need to wait for full muscular maturity to rely more on raw power to deal with their much heavier skeleton.
They mostly develop earlier sexually (and their brains).
Girls develop their strength never as much as boys (on average of course) but they develop pretty much the same as boys until age 13. Then the boys take off and gain much more strength until they are about 18, with the biggest leap around age 13/14. Girls just as well continue to develop their strength until ~age 18. They are not plateauing or something at age 13.
The window for learning complex new movements fast seems to close at roughly the same age for both, about 12-14.
That could be used as an argument that in a sport where the boys are the lifters and the girls are lifted you have to train these movements early.
But we can see that the necessary movements for pairs skating are not too complex for older skaters to learn, since we see many successfully switching to pairs later.
((Also I want to get rid of that anyway, but that's a completely different topic and I'll leave it out here.))
My main point however is that the additional strength a boy gains after 16 is not necessary to lift somebody safely. They are not doing weightlifting with way over 100 kilos. And a 17 year old boy on average is stronger than a 35 year old.
I want to say that girls are not developing much earlier in all areas and that men are not developing as late as one would think seeing these age rules. What we see in girls'/boys' ages in skating is often the result of our expectations and according training and sorting.
