While the eyes of the sporting world are focused on host city Paris, there is extra emphasis on the hundreds of children taking part in the 2024 Olympic Games.

While some sports, such as diving, gymnastics, wrestling and boxing, have a minimum age for athletes to participate, other sports, such as skateboarding, surfing and table tennis, have no restrictions.

Skateboarding, which made its debut at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics (postponed a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic), is attracting a particularly young field of competitors, with Finland’s Heili Sirvio and 13-year-old Hasegawa Mizuho from Japan, and Zheng Haohao, a Chinese athlete aged just 11, making their appearance in the French capital.

So what are the rules for children under 18 competing in the Games? How do they differ between different sports? Where do these children stay and how are they cared for?

What is the minimum age for the Olympic Games?

There is no specific age limit for participation in the Games. Age restrictions are set by the international federations responsible for each sport, rather than the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The most famous performance by a child at the Olympics was undoubtedly Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who at the age of 14 received a series of perfect 10 scores from judges at the 1976 Montreal Games.

Comaneci was 14 when she achieved a perfect score at the 1976 Olympics (AFP via Getty Images)

Several Olympic sports have no age restrictions, at both ends of the scale. In skateboarding at these Games, for example, Great Britain and Northern Ireland have 16-year-olds Sky Brown and Lola Tambling competing alongside Andy Macdonald, who turns 51 next week.

Most other sports, however, do have minimum ages. For example, female gymnasts must now be at least 16 — and there are growing calls for that to be raised to 18, in line with their male equivalents — while divers must be at least 14, as was the case for Team GB’s Tom Daley at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. In judo it’s 14, and in wrestling it’s 18.

In boxing, the minimum age is 19 and the maximum is 39. Special permission was given to Finland’s Mira Potkonen, who was 40 in Tokyo after the Olympics were postponed for a year due to the pandemic. She finished third in the women’s lightweight category, becoming the oldest boxer to win a medal at the Games.

The men’s football tournament is in principle a competition for players under 23 years of age, but each team of 18 players may contain three members over the age of 18.

In the UK, athletes must be at least 20 years old for marathons/racewalking and 18 years old to compete in throwing events, the heptathlon and decathlon, and the 10,000 metres. Athletes aged 16 and over may compete in other track events, as long as they have “demonstrated a consistent level of performance, as well as previous experience at major international competitions, which suggests that selection for senior events is appropriate for their long-term development”.

In Paris, 17-year-old Phoebe Gill will compete in the women’s 800m, and could become the youngest British athlete at the Olympics in more than 40 years.

How are young athletes protected during the Games?

At the Tokyo Olympics, the IOC provided escorts for athletes under the age of 16.

This time around, the IOC is encouraging each national team to appoint a protection officer and is offering two additional accreditations for welfare officers.

Athletes under 18 are allowed to stay in the Olympic Village, which will host around 10,000 Games participants, located in the Saint-Denis district in northern Paris, near the Stade de France. Whether they actually do so, however, depends on each country.

Athletes under the age of 18 must walk around the Olympic Village with a buddy (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

Scott Field, Team GB communications director, explained how careful attention is paid to who their youngest athletes share a room with.

“We have a welfare plan that dictates how the sporting community should manage where and with whom athletes will be rooming, whether in the Olympic Village or other accommodations,” Field said. The Athletics. “Children under the age of 16 must be accompanied by a guardian who must also accompany them when they are outside the Olympic Village/their satellite accommodation.

“We have a comprehensive wellbeing guide to support young people during their time at the Olympic Games. We also have a dedicated group of designated safeguarding officers who are on hand to provide wellbeing support during the Games.”

Australia has decided that the three youngest athletes in the 460-strong team — Arisa Trew and Chloe Covell, both 14, and 15-year-old Ruby Trew, who all skateboard — will stay in a hotel instead of the athletes’ village, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reported.

Under 18s staying in the Olympic Village do not share a bedroom with an adult. The apartments have a chaperone and under 18s must be accompanied by a buddy when walking around the athletes’ village. They must have a chaperone with them for all trips outside the village (parental permission is required) or they can be checked out by their parents.

The IOC added that this year’s Olympic Games will have “the most comprehensive package of mental health and protection resources, initiatives and services than any other sporting or Olympic event in history”. This includes having more than 160 accredited wellbeing officers from 87 national Olympic committees at the Games, a new AI-powered monitoring service to protect athletes from online hate, and two safeguarding officers in the Olympic Village.

What concerns has this raised?

In recent years, cases of sexual abuse, doping scandals and age falsification have highlighted concerns about the exploitation of young athletes.

This was seen most recently in the doping case surrounding Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, who was 15 when she won gold at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. It emerged that she had previously tested positive for trimetazidine, a heart drug banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and Valieva was given a four-year ban, backdated to her positive result in December 2021.

Her young age led to a debate about why only she was punished and not the Russian doctors who gave her the drugs. The Court of Arbitration for Sport revealed that Valieva had been given 56 different drugs and supplements between the ages of 13 and 15.

Travis Tygart, the US Anti-Doping chief, said the number of drugs she was given was “sickening”. Olivier Niggli, the WADA director general, described it as “shocking” and said Valieva had been “sacrificed” to protect those responsible.

Valieva won gold in Beijing but was later banned for four years (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Under WADA’s code, young people under the age of 16 are “protected persons”, meaning they face less penalties, increasing fears of exploitation.

Valieva’s case led to the International Skating Union raising the minimum age for athletes in its major competitions from 15 to 17. The change would be phased in over three years before the next Winter Olympics in Italy in early 2026.

Meanwhile, Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics doctor, was sentenced to more than 300 years in prison in 2018 over the US gymnastics sex abuse scandal. He was accused of abusing more than 250 athletes, including four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. In the UK, a 2022 report into gymnastics found that there had been an epidemic of abuse, with young athletes being starved and made to hang from the rings used in one of the sport’s events as punishment.

Going back even further, X-ray analyses of bones in 2009 revealed that 3,000 young Chinese athletes had falsified their ages, giving them an unfair advantage in competition.

Former WADA Deputy Director General Rob Koehler is now Director General of Global Athlete, an organization concerned about children’s participation in the Olympic Games.

“If you look at the Valieva case, you can clearly see that young children should not be going to the Games,” Koehler said The Athletics. “In every other professional sport, and this is professional sport, there are age limits — for example, in the NHL (the top hockey league in the US and Canada), before you can be drafted. They should use the Youth Olympics for young athletes. There’s extra attention there, time spent on education, time spent on culture.

“The WADA Code also treats young people under the age of 16 differently. That alone means that you lose all harmonization and quality.

“Do you want a 15-year-old kid to have that much pressure on him during the Olympics? It’s a tough place to be.

“We believe that there should be age limits and that they should be implemented immediately.”

(Top photo: Skateboarder Zheng Haohao competes in the Paris Olympics at age 11; He Canling/Xinhua via Getty Images)