How young is too young in the crucible of elite, international sports?
Officials in figure skating — a sport plagued on the global stage by questions about the mental and physical safety of some of its best and youngest competitors — appear set to address the issue head-on with a new proposal to raise the minimum age from 15 to 17 in its major events, including the Winter Olympics.
The International Skating Union, the global governing body for the sport, will vote on the measure when it meets next month in Thailand.
The question of instituting minimum age limits in global sports — long debated in many other sports, like gymnastics — re-emerged in unsettling fashion early this year at the Beijing Olympics, where the Russian skater Kamila Valieva, who was then 15, emerged at the center of a doping scandal that rocked the entire Games.