Determine skating age debate additionally exposes physique picture challenges | Well being and Health

The game is below scrutiny after 15-year-old Kamila Valieva of the Russian Olympic Committee examined optimistic for a banned coronary heart remedy, then did not medal in an occasion for which she was the overwhelming favourite.

Valieva’s ordeal has led some skating officers to suggest elevating the minimal age for elite determine skating competitions from 15 to 17, forward of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.

The age query is inseparable from the game’s struggles with consuming problems and physique picture. Youthful, much less developed skaters are doing issues on the ice that extra mature ladies’s our bodies cannot, notably the quadruple jumps carried out in Beijing by Valieva and different teen skaters working along with her embattled coach, Eteri Tutberidze.

“We see ladies who’re actually younger and skinny and who do very well in our sport,” stated Josefin Taljegård, a 26-year-old Swedish determine skater who competed within the ladies’s particular person occasion in Beijing. “Possibly that’s why they’re so skinny – as a result of they’re nonetheless youngsters.”

That places stress on older skaters to maintain tempo.

“It often is just not like ‘Oh you need to look this sort of method’ however generally one can hear ‘Oh should you had been skinnier, you’ll leap larger or rotate sooner,” Taljegård stated.

Whereas the Valieva case has centered the world’s consideration on doping, skaters say physique picture points are much more pervasive within the sport. The 2014 class of Olympic skaters is proof.

Yulia Lipnitskaya was Russia’s golden lady on the Sochi Video games when she was 15, earlier than changing into a cautionary story of persistent anorexia when she retired due to her struggles with the dysfunction.

American Gracie Gold’s well-known story of overcoming nervousness and an consuming dysfunction to proceed competing has been an inspiration for a lot of skaters.

U.S. ice dancer Kaitlin Hawayek, 25, stated she had an consuming dysfunction for a number of years. Not sufficient has been finished to coach younger skaters to see “their physique is nice precisely the way in which it’s,” she stated.

Hawayek feels lucky to have the assist of her teaching workers, nutritionist and trainers on the U.S. crew. “I’ve actually been in a position to see a brand new mindset that has allowed me to embrace my physique,” she stated.

U.S. determine skater Alysa Liu, who’s simply 16, stated she discovered a method to deal with unfavorable feedback about her physique, however it took time for her to actually perceive the dynamic she was being caught up in. The American prodigy positioned within the prime 10 for the ladies’s particular person occasion this week.

“I handled numerous negativity, like two years in the past,” Liu stated of the numerous critics who’ve commented on her very public development spurt. “At one level, I used to be like, why are they actually coming for a 14 yr outdated? That’s so bizarre. They’re simply sort of creepy for that. Why are they taking a look at a minor’s physique that method? It’s just a bit bizarre and sort of fallacious, clearly.”

U.S. pairs skater Ashley Cain-Gribble believes the next age restrict could be useful for the game she practically left as a consequence of physique shaming over her power and peak. The 26-year-old is 5-foot-6, making her considerably taller than a lot of her friends.

“Give skaters an opportunity to permit their physique to develop naturally,” Cain-Gribble stated. “I do know that I didn’t actually come into my very own physique till many later years.”

Elizabeth Daniels, a psychology professor on the College of Colorado in Colorado Springs who research physique picture in sports activities, is skeptical that an age change alone may handle this subject.

The bigger cultural drawback, Daniels stated, is that creative sports activities like determine skating, gymnastics and even diving are judged subjectively.

Half of a skating rating relies on how judges view the efficiency — music, costume, stream and the general really feel. A extra concise metric may maybe assist change the tradition of weight-reduction plan and diuretics in skating.

“They’re being judged on how they execute a talent, but additionally how they appear whereas they’re doing it,” Daniels stated. “When you’ve gotten a sport like that, and you might be judged on this creative method, the query turns into ‘Does my physique conform?’ That, I feel, will increase the potential for consuming problems.”

Skater or not, physique dissatisfaction can usually be seen in ladies as younger as 5, peak throughout adolescence and stay fixed all through a lady’s 20s.

Sports activities like determine skating cater to physique varieties which can be small and light-weight but match and muscular, stated Luke Corey, a sports activities drugs dietitian on the Mayo Clinic.

4 minutes of intense exertion is extraordinarily troublesome for even the very best athletes on the earth, so it is no shock that skaters might go to extremes in the event that they assume it may well assist their efficiency.

“We’re not imagined to see ache and vulnerability and all that, so it’s arduous to know,” Corey stated. “We would like greater, higher however at what price?”

Valieva’s case exhibits that the youngest skaters could also be particularly susceptible to such pressures from adults pushing a win-at-all-costs strategy, Cain-Gribble stated. Elevating the minimal age would assist.

“That you must be at an age the place you’re in a position to make selections and assume by yourself and be accountable and be capable to know what is true and what’s fallacious,” she stated, “and never simply be counting on these folks which can be in command of you.”

Related Press author Candice Choi contributed. Seattle-based AP journalist Sally Ho is on task on the Beijing Olympics, protecting determine skating. Observe her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_sallyho.