The 74-year-old Italian will serve a fourth term, having led the world governing body FIG since 1996.

 

He also has been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for eight years.

 

Adrian Stoica of Romania and Nellie Kim of Belarus were re-elected as presidents of the men's and women's technical committees, the bodies that make the rules for the sport.

 

There was also an influential new role for Brian Stocks, the chief executive and president of British Gymnastics, who was elected on to the FIG ruling executive board alongside Russia's Vassily Titov, China's Gao Jian of China and Switzerland's Walter Nyffeler.

 

Bob Colarossi, former president of USA Gymnastics; Germany's Wolfgang William and Atilla Orsel of Turkey were re-elected.

 

Grandi's biggest impact in his first three terms was the overhaul of artistic gymnastics' scoring system after a series of judging errors at the Athens Olympics.

 

The iconic 10.0 scale was dropped, replaced with an open-ended system in which gymnasts are awarded separate marks for difficulty and execution.

 

Some have complained that the new system is taking artistry out of gymnastics, and Grandi has vowed to address that in the current quadrennium.

 

Grandi has also pushed hard to increase the representation of smaller countries.

 

Teams at the London Olympics will be reduced to five gymnasts, down from seven in 1996 and six in Beijing, with the additional spots allowing more individual athletes to qualify.

 

The FIG is also expected to move forward with a licensing system, another of Grandi's projects.

 

Beginning next year, any gymnast competing in an international competition would have to have a licence, and that documentation would follow the athlete throughout his or her career.

 

There were suspicions that as many as five members of China's gold-medal women's gymnastics team were not old enough to compete at the Beijing Olympics.

 

But after reviewing documents for all of the girls - passports, ID cards and family registers - the FIG ruled they were, indeed, old enough.

 

The FIG is still looking into the ages of two members of the 2000 squad.