Nadia Comaneci

• Born: November 12, 1961
• Place of Birth: Oneşti, Romania

SPORT: Gymnastics

Early Life

Nadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Oneşti, Romania. Her father was an auto mechanic, and her mother was a hospital caretaker. She had one brother, four years her elder. She was a lively child, but she was also serious. She did not smile often and seemed emotionally strong. To release her excessive energy, she ran and jumped and pretended to be a gymnast. In 1968, when she was just six years old, she was discovered by Béla Károlyi. Károlyi was the Romanian Olympic gymnastics coach.

The Road to Excellence

Comăneci’s parents consented to Károlyi’s recruitment of their daughter. At seven, she competed in the Romanian National Junior Championships, where she placed thirteenth. After the meet, Károlyi gave her a doll to remind her never to finish thirteenth again. The following year, she won the National Junior Championships.

In 1975, Comăneci was finally eligible to enter senior international competitions. The first match she entered was the European Championships in Skien, Norway. Many well-known gymnasts were in attendance, including Russian gymnasts Ludmila Turishcheva and Nelli Kim. Comăneci placed first in the vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and all-around. She placed second to Kim in the floor exercises.

In March 1976, Comăneci entered the American Cup competition in New York City. One male and one female gymnast represented each participating nation in this competition. Comăneci won the Cup for Romania.

The Emerging Champion

Comăneci stood 5 feet tall and weighed 86 pounds when she first won a position on the Romanian national team. At the 1976 Olympics, held in Montreal, Canada, Comăneci was just fourteen years old. The Romanian team was the youngest gymnastics team in history to enter Olympic competition.

Although Comăneci had won several major gymnastics meets, she remained an unknown to most sports fans. Soon, however, she became a household name. At the 1976 Olympics, the Romanian team received the beam as its first event in the team rotation. The beam is considered the least desirable event to begin a competition because of the balance and precise movement necessary. The rotation, however, did not bother Comăneci. As the famous and favored Russian gymnasts looked on, Comăneci performed without apparent error. She received a 9.9 on a 10-point scale.

Comăneci next moved to the uneven bars and became the first gymnast in Olympic history to score a perfect ten. Led by Comăneci, the Romanian team earned a silver medal in the team competition. The Soviet team won the gold.

Comăneci again scored a perfect ten during the individual competition on both the uneven bars and the beam. She also won an individual gold medal in the all-around and a bronze medal in the floor exercises. When the competition was completed, Comăneci had received a perfect score of 10 seven times.

Comăneci made Olympic history with her perfect scores. She stood apart with her unique and innovative dismount from the uneven bars. At the 1976 Olympics, Comăneci first performed what became known as the Salto Comăneci dismount. She improved her repertoire on the beam by doing three backhandsprings in a row.

Continuing the Story

After the 1976 Olympics, Comăneci returned to her Romanian homeland as a hero. The Romanian government gave her and her family many gratuities, including vacations and an automobile. Comăneci became the youngest Romanian to receive the Hero of Socialist Work Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Romanian government.

Over the next five years, Comăneci grew 4 inches, struggled with illness, conditioning, and coaching changes, and continued to compete with varying degrees of success. In 1981, Károlyi and his wife Martha defected to the United States. They would achieve great success in the United States as they coached other American gymnasts to Olympic medals. Comăneci competed in her last major competition, the World University Games in Bucharest, Romania. In 1984, she officially retired from the sport at twenty-two, shortly before the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Comăneci became a judge and a coach of the Romanian national team.

In 1989, Comăneci defected to the United States shortly before the fall of the Romanian government. In 2001, she became a naturalized American citizen. In the early 1990s, she renewed her friendship with American gymnast Bart Conner. The two became engaged in 1994 and married in Romania on April 26, 1996. 2006 Dylan Paul Conner, the couple's first child, was born.

Comăneci became involved in charities. She was the vice president of the board of directors of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the vice-chair of the board of directors of the International Special Olympics, and a key contributor to the Nadia Comăneci Children's Clinic in Bucharest. In honor of her contributions to the Olympics, she was given the Olympic Order in 1984 and 2004; she was the first to receive this prestigious award twice.

As of 2016, Comăneci continued to travel worldwide as an inspirational speaker on topics including gymnastics and overall fitness and health. Additionally, she and Conner operate a gymnastics academy in Oklahoma. In July of that year, she returned to Montreal to deliver a speech at the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the 1976 Olympic Games. A plaza at Olympic Park in Montreal was renamed the following year to honor her.

In 2023, Romanian historian Stejarel Olaru wrote a book revealing that the communist government of Romania had actively surveilled Comăneci while she was at the height of her sport and popularity. The tyrannical Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu had obsessed that Comăneci would defect to the West and cause great embarrassment to his government. Ceausescu was overthrown on December 25, 1989, and killed by rioters.

Comăneci would later accuse her former coaches, Bela and Martha Károlyi, of physical and mental abuse while under their direction. These same accusations would be levied against the Károlyis by American gymnasts beginning in 2018. By the mid-2020s, the reputations of the Károlyis were thoroughly compromised, and they were no longer active in the sport.

Summary

At fourteen, Nadia Comăneci became the first gymnast in Olympic history to score a perfect ten. She dazzled the audience as they watched her receive seven perfect scores before the 1976 Olympics were completed.

Comăneci's persistence and fearlessness allowed her to exhibit skills never performed before. Her personality, performance ability, and perfection of the most difficult moves helped to make women's gymnastics a premier event of the Olympic Games.

Comăneci’s persistence and fearlessness allowed her to exhibit skills never performed before. Her personality, performance ability, and perfection of the most difficult moves helped make women’s gymnastics a premier event of the Olympic Games.

Bibliography

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