Over the past few decades in international sports, it has become quite apparent that the last amateurs left in the Olympic world are the people running it.

The other day, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge floated what he probably thought was a very sweet idea. In an interview with the French sports newspaper L'Équipe, Rogge said he would like to launch a Youth Olympic Games for athletes ages 14 to 18, perhaps 3,500 in all, to be held in cities that already have existing venues, starting in 2010. An Olympics for teenagers, you might call it.

If Rogge had given his plan even one more second of consideration, he might have asked himself three quick questions:

An Olympics for teenagers? Don't we already have that? Isn't it called the Olympics?

In gymnastics and figure skating — the most popular TV sports of the summer and winter Olympic Games, at least in this part of the world — teenagers have dominated for many years. That's occasionally been the case in swimming and diving, too. Teenagers have been stars of the Olympics going back to the days of Donna de Varona in the 1960s, Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci in the 1970s, Mary Lou Retton in the 1980s, Shannon Miller in the 1990s and Sarah Hughes and Carly Patterson in the early 2000s.

Six of the 14 members of the U.S. diving team at this week's world championships are 18 or under. Two are 14-year-old girls. U.S. swimming sensations Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff made their first Olympics at 15. We're on a first-name basis with enough figure skaters and gymnasts from the past — Oksana, Dominique, Tara — to remind us that retirement age in those sports sometimes comes before high school graduation.

Would Rogge now pull the latter-day Mary Lous out of the real Olympics and put them in his new Disney Channel version? Unlikely, though some might like that. It would slow down their progress, perhaps even calm their parents and agents.

But there's no way it will happen. That's because it would have the effect of allowing the Youth Olympics to actually feature better competition than the real Olympics, and that would win the gold medal for the silliest move in the history of sports, including all the things Terrell Owens and Dennis Rodman, combined, have ever done.

You can also imagine how TV sports executives would react to hearing the news that the pixies they rely on to drive ratings were being pulled out of the real Olympics at a time when TV ratings for the Games are dropping.

"Imagine Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan not being able to compete at the Winter Olympics in 1998 where they won the gold and silver medals because they were told they had to be in a teenaged Youth Olympics instead," said U.S. sports agent Mike Burg, who has represented skaters and gymnasts since the 1990s.

Now if Rogge wants to put future pixies, the girls who might be one level removed from prime time (we're probably talking 12- and 13-year-olds), into his Youth Olympics, he should ask another question:

Does the international sports community really want to showcase — we could also use the term exploit — these young girls at an even earlier age than we currently see them at the Olympics?

Some international sports federations have minimum age requirements for their young athletes. In skating, a competitor needs to turn 15 by July 1 of the previous year to be eligible for the Olympics. In gymnastics, an athlete has to turn 16 in the Olympic year.

The idea behind these rules is to keep these girls down on the farm, in school, for the longest possible time before they are exposed to TV cameras, agents, money — and of course, the alarming risk of injury to bodies that are still developing but being forced to do too much too soon.

Rogge's plan is a recipe for disaster for these young girls. The pressure to perform at the Youth Olympics, which presumably would be televised, would be similar to the pressure at the real Olympics. Agents would be lurking, of course — that is, if the kids weren't signed up already simply because they now were competing in such a big event. The minimum age requirements might as well be tossed out the window. The structure, such as it is, of kids' international sports would be obliterated.

It's possible some sports might benefit from a Youth Olympics with the proper constraints: softball, baseball, soccer and basketball come to mind. Team sports, in other words.

But individual sports, where the pressure already is so great on very young athletes?

The real Olympics is plenty early enough for them.

USA TODAY, March 21, 2007:
www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2007-03-21-youth-olympics_N.htm