The earliest champions in women's gymnastics tended to be in their 20s; most had studied ballet for years before entering the sport. Larissa Latynina, the first great Soviet gymnast, won her first Olympic all-around medal at the age of 22, her second at 26 and her third at 30; she became the 1958 World Champion while pregnant with her daughter. Czech gymnast Věra Čáslavská, who followed Latynina to become a two-time Olympic all around champion, was 22 before she started winning gold medals.
In the 1970s, the average age of Olympic gymnastics competitors began to gradually decrease. While it was not unheard of to for teenagers to compete in the 1960s — Ludmilla Tourischeva was sixteen at her first Olympics in 1968 — they slowly became the norm, as difficulty in gymnastics increased. Smaller, lighter girls generally excelled in the more challenging acrobatic elements required by the redesigned Code of Points. The 58th Congress of the FIG, held in July 1980, just before the Olympics, decided to raise the minimum age limit for major international senior competition from fourteen to fifteen.[4] The change, which came into effect two years later, didn't eliminate the problem. By the time the 1992 Olympics rolled around, elite competitors consisted almost exclusively of "pixies" — underweight, prepubertal teenagers — and concerns were raised about athlete welfare.