Nadia Comăneci, who aged just 14 scored the first perfect 10 at an Olympic Games in 1976, wouldn't be eligible to compete in top tier gymnastics competitions today.

Since a rule change came into effect in 1997, a female gymnast must wait until the year she turns 16 to transition from junior to senior gymnastics.

The rule has been seen by some countries as a barrier preventing the world's best gymnasts competing on the biggest stage.

In 2010, China was stripped of a women's bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics following an investigation that found there was an underage gymnast on the team.

However, with so many of the world's premier female gymnasts no longer at their best so young, the question of whether the age minimum should be raised from 16 to 18 has become a talking point in gymnastics circles.

Less intensive training during early teenage years as well as a potentially safer environment for vulnerable athletes, after countless examples of abuse at the top level around the world, are seen as some of the enormous benefits.

The evolution of women's gymnastics has seen skills requiring incredible strength and power become standard.

The most obvious example is America's Simone Biles, a generational athlete who, at 26 years old, threatens to sweep the medals yet again at the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium this week, having made a successful return from her Tokyo Olympics heartache.

At 25, Australia's Georgia Godwin is at her career peak — and still improving.

In 2023, Godwin has claimed eight medals across three international competitions, as well as her seventh Australian Championships title on the Gold Coast in May — becoming the oldest Australian woman to win the event.

Godwin's longevity has surprised even herself — as a junior, she expected to be done with the sport by the time she was 18 years old.

"Even in Australia we didn't see many athletes going past 19 or 20," Godwin told ABC Sport.

Godwin recently made some wholesale changes to her training regime, moving to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra to train solo with coach Josh Fabian, away from her big and bustling gymnastics club in Brisbane.

She's also taken a more holistic approach to her training, collaborating with experts across the sport science spectrum.

"Physio, psych, strength and conditioning, nutrition — everyone is more welcomed into this space, whereas previously it wasn't really, not for me anyway," Godwin said.

"It's really good to see that's the way it's going instead of the old mindset that the coach has to handle everything."

Godwin believes that change in mindset is "100 per cent" the reason she's been able to continue at the highest level well beyond what she expected as a junior gymnast — and she's not alone.

Competing in Antwerp along with Biles and Godwin are Mexico's Alexa Moreno (29), Netherlands' Sanne Wevers (32) and Chile's Makarena Pinto (35) and Franchesca Santi (31), to name a handful of gymnasts with extensive experience on the world stage.

Eight-time Olympian and representative of the former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan and Germany, Oksana Chusovitina has long been considered an outlier in the sport.

At a sprightly 48 years old the most experienced veteran in a sport traditionally full of novices is aiming to qualify for her ninth Olympics in Paris 2024.

Her longevity has come, in part, due to specialisation.

Chusovitina almost exclusively competes on vault and has done for many years, with that narrower focus on one apparatus helping to prolong her career.

Changing attitudes to changing bodies

Jessica O'Beirne, host of the gymnastics news podcast Gymcastic, said female athletes can actually benefit from a changed body shape later in their careers.

What O'Beirne dubs "puberty power" is the improvement usually seen in male gymnasts when their lean, prepubescent bodies transform into the muscular figure required for elite men's gymnastics.

"[American gymnast] Shannon Miller talked about having more power the older she got and, literally, weighing a little more helped her get over vault," O'Beirne said.

Another important factor, according to O'Beirne, is the work the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), the sport's governing body, has done to help identity and eliminate the bias shown by judges when evaluating the execution of a routine in favour of a younger gymnast.

"There is less fear of a judging bias because of body type, because of having a woman's body," O'Beirne said. 

That is due, in part, to the generational shift of coaching talent as they move into senior roles.