Debunking The Myth: Female Gymnasts Need To Be Tiny

Over the last few years I have noticed that a few female gymnasts have been much taller than I have expected. Indeed, it is a common belief that female gymnasts need to be tiny. However, when Rich McCharles from Gymnastics Coaching stated here (in the comments) that he believes the current code of points is best suited to a gymnast that is 4 foot 9 (144cm), I thought that this number is a bit too short and decided to investigate the heights of some top gymnasts. I have dug up (most) heights for gymnasts who made the all-around final at the 2008 Olympics and also the 2010 world championships to see if indeed gymnasts around a height of 144cm do better (gymnasts are shown in the order that they placed).

2008 Olympics
Gymnast	Height (cm)
Liukin	160
Johnson	145
Yang	161
Semenova	154
Nistor	150
Jiang	148
Pavlova	142
Izbasa	164
Chusovitina	153
Barbosa	151
Ferrari	145
Downie	156
Bonora	163
Parolari	n/a
Morgan	158
Hopfner-Hibbs	149
Tsurumi	141
Kaeslin	165
Petit	158
Oshima	149
Palesova	158
Silva	159
Dugain	152
Mys	145
Average	153.3
2010 Worlds
Mustafina	160
Jiang	148
Bross	152
Huang	154
Porgras	n/a
Mitchell	157
Nabieva	160
Kaeslin	165
Haidu	n/a
Lopez	153
Ferrari	145
Seitz	158
Raisman	155
Bonora	163
Barbosa	151
Whelan	150
Tanaka	156
Hypolito	147
Van Gerner	155
Pihan-Kulesza	162
Tsurumi	141
Hibbert	160
Malaussena	n/a
Preziosa	155
Average	154.7

Most notable in these figures is the presences a quite a few gymnasts around the 160cm mark (a height that many would consider too tall for elite gymnastics), and also a few that are even taller than this (eg Kaeslin at 165cm and Izbasa at 164cm). In addition, the averages of 153.3cm and 154.7cm are much higher than 144cm. Importantly, there is no correlation between height and placing. The averages of the top 5 and top 10 for 2008 are 154cm, 152.8cm and 153.5cm and 156.13cm for 2010 and both short and tall gymnasts are distributed fairly evenly throughout the placings. Although this is only a small study and is by no means conclusive, it does indicate that perhaps shorter gymnasts are not necessarily advantaged as is commonly thought and that perhaps any gymnast in the range of 140cm - 165cm can equally compete at the highest level.

This site suggests that the average height for US women is 162cm, and this Wikipedia article shows the average heights for a number of different countries which shows many countries have a similar average height and a few even have average heights below 160cm. This would suggest that many female gymnasts can even be an average height or even slightly taller than average. So instead of saying that gymnasts need to be tiny, maybe we should instead say that female gymnasts should just not be overly tall. In addition, for those who are looking at competing at a low level or doing gymnastics recreationally, height should not be considered as a factor in whether to take up gymnastics.