I am happy with the 16 age limit but would also be ok with 17 or 15. However I think it is wrong that kids of 13 can compete in some other sports. It should all be the same for all sports in the Olympics. Diving, swimming, gym, skateboarding, skating etc. One age. Having 13 year olds in anything is ridiculous.
I don't think the age limits are actually the problem. I think the problem is the persistent mindset in women's sports that everyone hits their peak in their teens. It's like society cannot accept that while some girls make peak in their teens, others will peak later.
We don't really see this in men's sports. If we see a male gymnast that is extremely good at 16, we don't begin training all other male gymnasts as if they must also be good at 16. We see him as an outlier. There's room for other gymnasts to develop at a slower pace.
We also see women peaking in their mid to late twenties in other sports (track and field, tennis, basketball, etc.). I personally played sports all through high school and was a semi (more like quasi) pro athlete in my early 20s. I was at my strongest in my late 20s. To me that indicates that improvements in physical prowess aren't limited to our teenage years.
However, sports like gymnastics, figure skating, and snowboarding train every girl like she's a prodigy. I think that's the real reason gymnasts bodies break down so quickly. We see girls learning new skills as college gymnasts or as elites in their 20s or 30s. Yet there's still this pervasive mythology that if you don't acquire a certain skillset in your teens, your career is over.
That's why I'm excited about NIL in college. I would love to see female gymnasts follow the same trajectory as other women's sports. You learn the basics in your youth. You start to train a bit harder in high school. You ramp things up in college. Then you hit your stride in your mid 20s. If the U.S. changed it's compulsory system to focus on nice form, clean execution, and beautiful dance, I would die happy. I'd like to see junior international competitions go away entirely, or resemble gymnastics under the old 10.0 system with capped difficulty and more emphasis on uniqueness and beautiful form.