At one point in Women’s Artistic Gymnasts (WAG) history, it was actually possible for a gymnast to win a medal at the World Championships/Olympics and then return to win another round of medals at the junior level. As bizarre as this scenario sounds, not only did it happen, it was a trend that existed from the early 1970s and didn’t end until the 1997-2000 Olympic quad.

The origin of this rule: During the 1970s the widely accepted practice was to cap junior competitions at 16 years and under. Because the FIG age limit at the time was 14 years and over, this created a situation where the junior age maximum exceeded the senior age minimum. In other words, gymnasts would have an “overlap” where they were simultaneously eligible for both senior and junior competition.

The trend was first possible starting in the late 1960s, but its first high profile case occurred with Nina Dronova. In 1971 she won Druzhba which was the top international competition for juniors of the era. In 1972 Dronova was the alternate on the Soviet Olympic team. Then in 1973 Dronova returned to Druzhba to compete against an 11 year old Nadia Comaneci.

At the 1974 World Championships Lidia Gorbik was one of two alternates on the Soviet team. One year later Gorbik would win the 1975 edition of Druzhba. Technically speaking, in 1975 the victor of the most prestigious junior level competition was actually two and a half years older than the victor of the most prestigious senior level competition.

And then there was Maria Filatova. Five months after Filatova won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics, she returned to compete at the Junior USSR Championships. But this story gets even weirder. Not only did a returning Olympian compete in a junior competition, she wasn’t even close to being the oldest gymnast in attendance.

The gymnast who won this competition was Elena Mukhina who was actually 13 months older than Filatova. Mukhina used this junior competition to achieve breakout success and it was this specific competition that propelled her to the top of the Soviet team. The irony here is that a junior prospect was upgraded to the senior team, and immediately became one of its oldest members.

Entering 1977 Elena Mukhina was the reigning Soviet Junior Champion, and yet she was older than virtually all of the gymnasts participating at the Soviet national team camps. It is the most noteworthy example demonstrating how blurry the line between “junior” and “senior” had become. This trend continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but mostly on a “same year” basis where a gymnast would compete at a high profile junior competition, then attend a World Championships/Olympics a few months later. But in the 1990s things once again pivoted towards the absurd.

In 1990 the Soviets sent Tatiana Lysenko to the World Cup, a high profile senior competition, while Oksana Chusovitina competed in the Junior European Championships in the same year. Chusovitina was born on June 19th, 1975 while Lysenko was born on June 23rd, 1975. Despite the four day difference, one gymnast competed as a senior, the other as a junior. Both gymnasts would appear together at the 1990 Goodwill Games.

At the 1996 Junior European Championships Viktoria Karpenko won a bronze medal in the All-Around while Elvire Teza finished one spot behind her in 4th place. Both gymnasts won gold medals during Event Finals at the 1996 Junior European Championships. Both gymnasts had competed at the 1995 World Championships the year prior. This would be the last time the overlap phenomena occurred. Following the 1996 Olympics the FIG raised the senior age limit and after three decades this trend had come to an end. At least in major competition.

These are some of the crazier examples of gymnasts who had blurred the line between junior and senior. The main culprit to this trend was a lack of conformity regarding age rules amongst the various junior competitions and the FIG. There was also a lack of conformity between organizers of the European Championships and FIG. But most importantly, in modern gymnastics there is an attitude that the junior and senior levels are separated by a hard line.

But that mindset is actually something of a recent development in WAG. In one of my previous articles I wrote about Nadia’s first victory over an established veteran. At the time Nadia was an 11-year old. The gymnast she beat was 26 years old. In 1980 Olga Mostepanova who was listed as a 12-year old but was actually a 10-year old competed alongside Emilia Eberle, an Olympic veteran. In 1984 an 11-year old Elena Gurova competed alongside Maxi Gnauck and Simona Pauca. Both gymnasts won All-Around medals at the Olympics and Alternate Olympics that year.

The reason I cite these examples is to give context to the era as a whole. While you have the bizarre scenario of senior eligible gymnasts competing in what were official junior competitions, it was occurring alongside competitions that had relaxed age limits which resulted in extreme age gaps.

While it makes sense to upgrade a talented junior prospect into a senior competition, at first glance it makes little sense to do the opposite. But the overlap trend proved to be quite beneficial for both the juniors and seniors who had been affected by it. The rule itself originated out of an era where gymnasts had been frequently brought up on a 1960s mindset dictating that gymnasts typically peaked in their late teenage years. Whereas other coaches had already realized the direction the sport was heading and were preparing their gymnasts for an Olympic debut at 14 years old.

In the context of WAG being in a transition era between the 1960s classical era and the rise of “little girl” gymnasts of the 1970s, it made sense to allow 14 year olds into the senior division while retaining the option for 16 year olds who weren’t ready for high level competition to remain in the junior ranks.

In the early 1970s high octane junior prospects such as Nina Dronova and Nadia Comaneci were so strong that they were capable of challenging the very best gymnasts in the world. Entering them into a junior competition was a complete mismatch. It wasn’t fair to Nina and Nadia that they had to waste their time competing against gymnasts that posed no threat to them. It wasn’t fair to the rest of the juniors who were about to get demolished in their wake.

At the same time for 15/16 year olds like Lidia Gorbik and Elena Mukhina, they were caught between a rock and a hard place. They were too old to be seen as promising novice prospects in the fashion of Nadia and Natalia Shaposhnikova. But they were also too young to be established seniors like Olga Korbut and Ludmilla Turischeva. For both Gorbik and Mukhina, attending and winning a renowned junior competition added a key win to their competitive resume. For both of them, it helped convince Soviet officials to give them major assignments.

The overlap trend may not seem smart or fair in the context of Viktoria Listunova who is a proven winner at the junior level, but it remains to be seen if she will contend for a medal at the 2021 Olympics. But in the context of the era in which the overlap trend existed from the late 1960s to 1996, it actually did some good in spite of the quirkiness it created.