First let us look at the Nationality of Lara Ponle. A young woman studying medicine in her college is a national asset to her country at that time. Even if she was not originally trained as a physician, her academic qualifications and professional experience would make her a natural choice for a career in medicine. But even so, if we examine the Nationality issue in the context of height enhancement, we see that she may not have been naturally tall given her nationality and her birth place. This does not mean that the height increase is impossible for a non-national but the possibility of being categorized as” ineligible” or” ineligible due to nationality” can significantly reduce the number of possible candidates.
So, now we turn to her profession. Being a gymnast certainly could have had some influence on her standing in terms of height, although it is highly doubtful that it would be enough to classify her as “ineligible due to nationality”. However, as we see above, she could have had some problem with her height which could be caused by an inappropriate training regimen or her sport’s height requirements. Her height problem, combined with her knowledge about her height, could be the cause of her disqualification from competing in the Olympics. And that leaves us with the question: could she have competed if her parents were not US citizens?
There is only one way to answer this question: assuming that each gymnast in the pool had a partner who was also gymnastic in training and at the same time had similar heights, in spite of being of different nationalities, would they be able to compete? The answer is “maybe”. If the gymnasts were friends, it is very likely that they would know each other well enough to recognize physical differences that could account for their difference in height. Alternatively, it is also possible that their partners were not gymnasts and could have been considered a better alternative. If we consider the pool of athletes recruited to the US National Team programs, there are many very tall Americans among them. Therefore, it seems very unlikely that it would have been possible for her to have competed as a gymnast if her parents were not US citizens.