Piel said:
This is an excellent topic for an RGirl consult. RGal where is your twin?
Grgranny said:
I wish Rgirl would post here what she thinks of Svetlana's shape. Looks to me like she is anorexic.
Of course I made a beeline to this thread
, although I must say I was disheartened to find the emphasis was on the women and not on drooling over the men. Lord a'mighty! Those male gymnasts have some of the most perfect (I know, you can't have most perfect, but I'm changing the rules) bodies on earth. I've watched Alexei Nemov through three Olympics and ever time I watch him mount that pommel horse......I'd better stop there.
As for the ever-constant disagreements over what is aesthetically thin, what's scary skinny, what's chunky, etc. in the women, I don't have time to make too many comments now (though you know I'll manage to say a boatload), However, I will say the following:
--I think Khorkina is genetically predisposed to that kind of ultrathin, flexible, long-boned body, ie ectomorph, and gymnastic training only enhances it. If she didn't train, Sveta would probably look like a very short Kate Moss, the model, when she was about 16. Plus, for everyone, cameras and lighting add about 5 to 10 pounds to the look of the body.
--Courtney Kupets and Carly Patterson are definitely NOT chunky. If you saw either of them in person in street clothes, I swear they would look muscular but thin. When I was in grad school we worked on a study following weight and percent body fat in the #1 university gymnastics team in the country. The percent body fat among the top gymnasts on the team ranged from less than 1% (when it's that low, it's hard to measure it accurately because we couldn't factor in bone density--or at least it was difficult in 1984) to 14%. The 1% girl was quite unique, but among the 6% to 14% girls, there was no signifcant differences in their gymnastics abilities, injury rates, or aesthetic appearance. Of course some people are going to have strong opinions regarding body appearance, which is their right. However, when you start predicting what people are going to look like as they mature, I would not bet any money on it. Thin at 16 doesn't mean thin at 36, nor does compact and muscular at 16 mean the same at 36. Carly Patterson could grow six inches in height between now and age 36 and turn out very slender. The only thing gymnasts tend to keep are their broad muscular shoulders, which may be more a function of the LACK of upper body work most young girls get rather than the amount of work gymnasts get.
For example, how many of use would have predicted that the Soviet Union's 69-lb Tatiana Gutsu of the '92 Olympics would, by 1996, be unrecogniziable as her '92 gymnast self. She looked more like a weight lifter than a gymnast. Of course she had grown 4 to 6 inches, but she also looked as if she had gained at least 50 pounds. I would classify her body as chunky, and she seemed happier at this weight and not doing gymnastics than she did in '92. IIRC, she described how it was a constant battle to keep her body from growing the way it was supposed to and function at the highest of elite gymnastic levels.
Contrast Gutsu with Mary Lou Retton of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics team. Because it was a Soviet and Eastern Bloc boycotted Olympics, it was basically the US, Western Europe, Africa, Japan, and certain Asian and South American countries that competed. The point is, Mary Lou was described as very "different" from the typical gymnast. She was certainly not thin and svelte. She was very short and muscularly packed solid. Certain members of the media said she looked like a bowling ball--which was pretty accurate. Other journalists said it was great that a new kind of gymnast had reached the top, that they didn't all have to look like Nadia Comenici or Olga Korbut.
At the time, I figured that once Mary Lou quit gymnastics and started growing, she would "fill out" ("blimp out"; choose your adjective). But the years went by and while Mary Lou did grow a couple of inches, she actually became quite a bit slimmer. Without the bulk of the musle mass, Retton had and has a slender though still slightly stocky body. In any case, she looks beautiful.
The point is that with athletes, it's guesswork in terms of trying to predict whose body is going to change in what ways once they've matured and stopped doing gymnastics. Genetics is also a huge contributing factor.
Final words: I think it's great that we are seeing so many different body types among the women doing top level gymnastics. Of course elite gymnasts still need to be relatively short, low body weight, and low percent body fat. But in '96, the USA's "Magnificent 7," which was the heaviest team of all the teams there in terms of weight and percent body fat won the team gold over the other top teams, which were significantely slimmer and leaner. The US also won a good deal of individual medals. And if Carly is so "chunky" and if that's hurting her gymnastics, she seems to be doing something right since she won the individual all-around.
The fact is, different bodies perform at their maximal at different weights and percent body fat. Yes, there is a bell curve of body size and lean mass that is ideal for a female gymast. But some are going to function best at one far end of the curve while others will do best at the other, with most doing best somewhere within the 66% middle curve. And I'm just talking about the ones who make it to elite level gymnastics.
IMO it's fine not to like a certain gymnast's body for aesthetic reasons. But to take a gymnast who fits right in the midst of the bell curve for an ideal body of an elite gymnast seems to me unfair. Carly Patterson got the job done in most of the team apparatus and the all-around over gymnasts who apparently many think had better gymnastic bodies. Fine to prefer one body over another, fine to argue judging, but I think the trend in gymnastics (and figure skating) toward different body types, especially among the women, is just great and I hope to see more of it.
Rgirl
(Did you see him in that suit giving out medals in his role as IOC member?) And then there's Despatie, with those beautiful brown eyes, and the Irish flagbearer, whoever he was ...
