Nadia Comaneci was 14 years old when she became the “little fairy of Montreal”. The Romanian made history at the 1976 Olympics with the first perfect score of 10 out of 10 in gymnastics.
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She is a young girl measuring 1.53 meters and weighing 41 kilograms from Romania who will forever mark the history of gymnastic and help to popularize it.
On July 19, 1976, at 14 years and eight months, Nadia Comaneci electrified the Montreal Games after an impeccable routine on the uneven bars. Around 18,000 spectators give the young girl with the ponytail a standing ovation. The results panels are not programmed to record perfection and first display the score of…1.00. The stunned spectators understand the real score when the commentator announces it. Nadia Comaneci obtains a perfect score of 10 out of 10, a first in the history of Olympic Games. She enters the pantheon of world sport. In Canada, she will again obtain a 10 on six other occasions. Nadia Comaneci, who started gymnastics in kindergarten, becomes a global phenomenon.
This ” perfect ten » (“Perfect 10”) became his calling card. And no one will be able to match it again. The score of 10 can no longer be awarded since the rating system came into force in 2006. In Moscow, four years later, the “little fairy from Montreal” won two additional gold medals before retiring from sport in 1981 .
More future in Romania
In Romania, dictator Nicolae Ceausescu made her an icon of the regime. But her relations with the Romanian state quickly became strained and she was closely monitored. In November 1989, Nadia Comaneci managed to cross the Iron Curtain, a month before the revolution, passing through Hungary on foot with the desire to join the United States. The epic lasts five days. She will take a plane in Vienna, heading to New York.
Ironically, a month later, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were killed by a burst of Kalashnikovs, after an hour of a mock trial. The riots which took place in December 1989 put an end to thirty-four years of communist rule and rule, two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “ I left because I wanted to find out what the future had in store for me. However, I no longer had a future in Romania at that time. Rather than waiting, enduring a life that would have been imposed on me, and as I hate complaining, I wanted to act, to give myself the chance to open the next chapter. I had already risked a lot of things, I did not hesitate to face what this defection would entail », she said in the columns of The Team.
At 62, Nadia Comaneci remains a legend. She still lives in the United States, in Oklahoma. Asked if there was a donation, the “little fairy from Montreal” replied: “ I think everyone has one, but they don’t know what it is until they discover it. Sport allowed me to achieve that. I liked details, I wanted challenges, to feel capable of achieving what others thought impossible. »
“ I believe I am remembered because the world was not prepared for what I caused. There is also the fact that this little girl came from Romania, a country from which we did not expect much », Says Nadia Comaneci who had the Olympic rings and her first 10 tattooed on her ankle.
Series – They marked the Olympics:
1- The Algerian Hassiba Boulmerka, proud stride, head held high
2 – Cathy Freeman, symbol of Australian reconciliation in Sydney 2000
3 – Marie-José Pérec, French legend of the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics
4 –Derartu Tulu and Elana Meyer, a rainbow in Barcelona 1992