Atiković, A. et al.: ChaŶges iŶ the gyŵŶastics ŵiŶiŵuŵ age ƌeƋuiƌeŵeŶts... Acta Kinesiologica 11 (2017) Suppl 1: 80-88 80 CHANGE THE GYMNASTICS MINIMUM AGE REQUIREMENTS AND THE CHANGES THAT HAVE OCCURRED IN MAJOR COMPETITIONS IN WOMEN'S ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS Almir Atiković 1* , Sunčica Delaš Kalinski 2 and Ivan Čuk 3 1 Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2 Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Split, Croatia 3 Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Original scientific paper Abstract The Olympic Games (OG) and World Championships (WC) represent the crown of each athlete’s career, so it is the same with gymnasts. The aims of this study it was investigate the historical analysis of the chronological age trend of all participants of women’s artistic gymnastics who have won medals in the period between 1928 and 2016 has been made. The examinees were gymnasts who had won medals at the following competitions: OG from 1928 to 2016 (n = 655) and WC from 1934 to 2015 (n = 997). If we compare the age of the WAG by disciplines, the oldest gymnasts are on the BB with an average age on (OG 20.88 ± 4.93) and on VT (WC 19.79 ± 4.17) years old, and the youngest in the FX (OG 20.24 ± 4.14) and BB (WC 18.38 ± 3.62). The results of independent t test were significant difference between OG and WC on All-around individual (AAI), Valuting table (VT), Uneven bars (UB), Balance beam (BB), Floor (FX), and second place on AAI, BB and FX. Since artistic gymnastics becomes each Olympic cycle over more demanding in terms of complexity and difficulty value of the elements, it is expected fact that gymnasts need more time to acquire stability, experience and safety when performing such complex exercises in future. Key words: t-test, Cohen's d, effect sizes r, women's artistic gymnastics Introduction The Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) is the governing body for gymnastics worldwide. It is the oldest established international sports federation (1881) and has participated in the Olympic Games (OG) since their revival in 1896. The first ever gymnastics World Championships (WC) took place in 1903. The FIG governs seven disciplines: Gymnastics for All (GfA), Men's Artistic (MAG), Women's Artistic (WAG), Rhythmic (RG), Trampoline (TRA), Aerobic (AER) and Acrobatic (ACRO) Gymnastics. The basis of all competitions in men's artistic gymnastics are all-around which include many different apparatuses routines, within a team or individually. Artistic gymnastics is a typical multidisciplinary sport with six disciplines in men's artistic gymnastics: Floor (FX), Pommel horse (PH), Rings (RI), Vault (VT), Parallel bars (PB), High bar (HB ) and four disciplines in women's artistic gymnastics: Vault (VT), Uneven bars (UB), Balance beam (BB) and Floor (FX). The competition rules are defined in: Statutes of the FIG, Technical Regulations FIG, Code of Points, Apparatus norms which are changed and perfected by the FIG’s commissions for each Olympic cycle. Chronological age refers to the number of years and days elapsed since birth. Success in gymnastics is the result of many years of extensive planning and preparation by coaches, clubs, parents and other supporting partners. Available data for this reasrch focus on ages history top levele male gymnast. The Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique, in 1980, right before the Olympic Games, decided to raise the minimum age from 14 to 15 years for international-level female gymnasts (Goehler, 1980). This rule change was followed later, in 1997, by another modification that increased the international competitive age to 16 years (Normile, 1996; Vieru, 1997). The results of the female data are presented authors (Claessens et al., 1991): OG1964 Tokyo; n =102, M = 22.7, (Hirata, 1966), OG1968 Mexico City; n = 21, M = 17.8, (De Gray at al., 1974), OG1972 Munich; n = 133, M = 19 (Hirata, 1979a,b), WC1974 Varna n = 106, M = 18.5 (Zaharieva, 1979), OG1976 Montreal; n = 99, M = 18.2 (Lopez et al., 1979), WC1983 Budapest; n = 161, M = 16.8 (Gajdoš, 1984), OG1984 Los Angeles; n = 75, M = 17.2 (Staub, 1986), WC1985 Montreal; n = 52, M = 16.7 (Staub, 1986); WC1987 Rotterdam; n = 201, M = 16.5 (Claessens et al., 1991, 1999). Škrelj (1934) carried out the characteristics of anthropometric variables for the Sokol gymnasts in (1933; n = 186; age M = 21.86 years). Unfortunately, Škerlj (1934) did not provide measures of standard age deviation in order to make calculations of statistical differences between then and now. Čuk and Karácsony (2002) in his book „Rings“ presented the previous research on age in timeline from 1964 until 1980 were conducted by Rozin & Čeburaev (1981) and showed age of top male gymnasts at the OG [OG1964, (M = 25.6, SD = 2.9); OG1968, (M = 24.2, SD = 3.4); OG1972, (M = 24.6, SD = 2.8); OG1976 (M = 23.3, SD = 4.0); OG1980, (M = 23.2, SD = 3.1)]. Minimum age for participants was 13.0 years at the WC1987 and raised to 16.0 years at the 1997 WC. Mean ages have since increased: 16.5 (WC1987), 17.4 (WC1997), 18.0 (OG2000), and 18.8 (OG2008) years (Claessens, 2007; Malina et al., 2013). The demands of the Olympic gymnastics have continued to escalate,