The International Olympic Committee on Friday invited international federations to establish a minimum age to compete in seniors, an issue revived during the Beijing Winter Olympics by the case of young Russian skater Kamila Valieva.
The body’s executive committee, among other subjects relating to the Paris-2024 programme, “recommended” that the federations “look into the question of the minimum age in their sports and, if necessary, provide appropriate adjustments to their regulations,” the IOC said in a statement.
The organization therefore refrains from setting a general minimum age for participation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, although it has organized Youth Olympic Games since 2010 reserved for teenagers aged 15 to 18 – also currently eligible at seniors.
But with this single sentence, she commits each federation to start this project, thus to imitate the International Skating Federation (ISU), which has included on the agenda of its next Congress (from June 6 to 10 in Phuket, Thailand ) raising the age requirement for seniors from 15 to 17 years.
Sea serpent of high-level sport, the question of the minimum age mixes physical and psychological issues, between the risks of overtraining in full puberty, technical bonus for young skinny athletes, and media overexposure too heavy to bear.
Revealed in the middle of the Beijing Olympics, the positive doping control of the Russian skater Kamila Valieva, 15, had highlighted the dangers of this sporting high mass for a teenager.
While the regulations of the World Anti-Doping Agency make the European champion a “protected person”, because she was under 16, the media scene of the Games had shattered the confidentiality to which she was entitled , and she had psychologically cracked in the middle of the free program.
At the Tokyo Summer Olympics, spectators had also seen teenagers outrageously dominate the skateboarding events, living from the age of 13 the experience of the Olympic village without being able to be accompanied by relatives, pandemic obliges.
