Epidemiology of injuries in elite Women's Artistic Gymnastics: a retrospective analysis of six seasons

BackgroundWomen's Artistic Gymnastics (WAG) is a sport well known for requiring a heavy and difficult training load from a younger age to reach a high level of performance. This also is associated with an injury risk. Epidemiological studies are thus needed to improve injury prevention strategies.ObjectiveWe aimed to determine the injury epidemiology in French high-level WAG.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective analysis of injury data collected prospectively over six seasons from the 2014-2015 season to the 2019-2020 season among French high-level Women's Artistic Gymnasts from the France Gymnastics National Centre of Saint-Etienne. We performed descriptive analyses, including the calculation of the 1-year injury prevalence.Results43 gymnasts were included in this study, representing 111 gymnast-seasons. A total of 285 injuries were collected over the study period, that was, an average of 2.6 injuries per gymnast per season. On average, 91.4% of gymnasts had at least one injury per season. The estimated injury incidence rate was 1.8 injuries per 1000 hours of gymnastics practice. The knee was the most affected joint (16%), followed by the elbow (12%) and the ankle (12%). The most frequent injury type was physis pathologies (16%) and bone injuries (15%). Eighty-eight per cent of injuries required a modification of the gymnastics practice.ConclusionsThe results of this study allowed a description of the epidemiology of injuries in this population of young and elite gymnasts. This very high injury prevalence supports the need to improve injury risk reduction strategies in WAG.