How Nadia had to fight for perfect 10
When Nadia Comaneci stepped on to the gymnastics floor in the 1976 Olympics, few would have guessed what the slip of a girl was about to achieve.
The ponytailed 14-year-old hoped to do well. But when the scores went up, history was made.
Nadia was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games.
That achievement was incredible enough. But at the same Games, she received six more perfect 10s en route to winning three gold medals.
Before her feat, it was thought to be something no one would be able to achieve.
The scoreboard didn’t even show “10” because its maker, Omega, had been told the score was impossible.
Nadia’s achievements seemed like a fairy tale. But, like so many fairy tales, Nadia’s story had a dark side.
She was competitive from an early age and was spotted at six turning carefree cartwheels in her school playground by Bela Karolyi.
He was a gymnastics coach and signed her up to join the experimental gym school he ran.
Karolyi later said Nadia was the only gymnast he could never “break”. If he asked her to do 25 push-ups, she did 50.
As a youngster, she always dreamed of being able to fly. Gymnastics, she said later, was the closest she could get to it.
That love for the sport, her natural competitiveness and the coaching of Bela Karolyi was to prove a world-beating combination.
The Karolyis defected to America in 1981. The Romanian authorities then kept a watchful eye on Nadia, monitoring her and making sure they knew what she was up to.
She was no longer allowed to travel outside of Romania – she had previously toured America and raised $250,000 for her country – and even if she went for a cup of coffee, she was followed.
The monitoring didn’t stop her own defection to America in 1989, along with fellow gymnasts. She left her family behind and didn’t see them for five years.
She said her returning to Romania after so much time away was extremely emotional, but doesn’t regret leaving for America.
“You just want your freedom. You want opportunity,” she said. Nadia went on to settle in Canada and she immersed herself back in gymnastics.
She married former American gymnast Bart Conner and had a son, Dylan.
The family splits its time between Oklahoma City and Los Angeles.
She is now 56 and, while she remains interested in gymnastics, she has made a living from reality TV and appeared on the American version of The Apprentice.