November 12 – Happy Birthday, Nadia Comăneci!

nPostednon November 12, 2016

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nInremember so well being impressed with the young Romanian gymnastnNadianComăneci,nway back in 1976, when she became thenfirst gymnast in Olympic history to be awarded a perfect score of 10.

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nApparentlynsuch a score was thought to be impossible, especially in the Olympics. WhennOmega was creating the scoreboard for the gymnastics events at then1976 Montreal Olympics, they asked how many digits it should allow onnthe electronic scoreboard. They were told just 3. The people orderingnthe scoreboards “knew” that nobody could score over 9.95.

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nThennComănecinscored a 10, and this is what the scoreboard displayed:

nForna few seconds, everyone was stunned and confused. This giftedn14-year-old athlete had done amazingly well – how could she onlynearn a 1? Even Comăneci was confused at first. Then an announcementnwas made that the score was a perfect 10.

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nThencrowd went wild!

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nThat Olympics NadianComăneci went on to earn six more perfect 10s andnthree gold medals. Comăneci and other gymnasts occasionally earnednperfect 10s since then – but now scoring in gymnastics has changednso that there is no one perfect score – it depends on thendifficulty level of the routine or vault. n

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n(Bynthe way, in the 1967 European Championships, a woman fromnCzechoslovakia earned some perfect 10s. I guess it was considered anone-off and forgotten?)

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nDefection

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nNadianComăneci’s Romanian coaches, Bela and Marta Karolyi, defected to thenU.S. in 1981, and Comăneci’s life got suddenly much more difficult.nApparently, Romanian officials worried that she, too, would defect,nso she was watched constantly, her actions and strictly controlled,nand she was no longer allowed to travel outside of Romania except asna spectator during the 1984 Olympics in the United States.

Inwould’ve thought that would be the last place Romanian officialsnwould allow her to go, but they kept careful guard over Comăneci,nand she wasn’t even allowed to speak to her former coaches!

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nComănecinbegan to feel like a prisoner. So she decided to defect, herself. Inn1989, just a few weeks before the Romanian Revolution, Comăneci flednher country in a dangerous overland journey, mostly at night, mostlynby foot through Romania, Hungary, and Austria. Comăneci defectednwith six other Romanians and was led by a former Romanian who hadnbecome an American citizen.

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nIfnthey had been caught, they might well have been killed, like manynother Romanian would-be-defectors had been.

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nAndnyet just two weeks later, a revolution started that ended withnRomania becoming a free nation!

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NadianComăneci ended up in the United States, as was her goal, but she wasnstill kept sequestered away from her former friends, the Karolyis andnAmerican athlete Bart Conner. (The person who kept her away from themnwas the man who had smuggled her out of Romania.)

nFinally, Connernmanaged to find a way to talk to her. Later, Conner and Comănecindeveloped a long-distance friendship and eventually a romance. Theyngot married in 1996, and Comăneci became a U.S. citizen in 2001.

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