Night of November 27, 1989: Nadia Comaneci crosses the Hungarian border to flee the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. For the driver Romanian, it’s a disaster. His regime (which would fall a few weeks later) lost its most prestigious ambassador: Nadia Comaneci, five gold medals at the Olympic Games, two world champion titles. In the process, Ceausescu summons the director of the Securitate, the terrible Romanian secret police. How could her agents let the most famous gymnast of all time escape? Since the hatching of the champion, in 1971, the Securitate had nevertheless set up an exceptional system to monitor her every move…
For nearly a year, Stejarel Olaru consulted the archives of the sprawling organization in Bucharest. He went through the 36 volumes of the Comaneci file. Based on the thousands of reports of spinning mills, medical reports, minutes, denouncements and testimonies of dozens of informants, many of whom gravitated in his close entourage, this historian traced the extraordinary destiny of the young prodigy, whose breathtaking sequences of mastery and creativity will force the judges to review their scoring system, so much she was above the others.
The book he drew from it, “Nadia Comaneci in the eye of the secret police” (ed. Robert Laffont Quebec), reads like a novel. Interview.
L’Express: What did you discover in these archives?
Stejarel Olaru: First, I was able to measure the extent of corruption in gymnastics, within the Eastern bloc. During international competitions, Eastern European countries agreed to fix the results. The officials of the different federations met the day before the competition and decided together on the winner. When Nadia Comaneci participated in her first international competitions in 1975, she immediately became a serious opponent for the Soviets, which created strong tensions between Moscow and Bucharest. One episode has remained famous. At the European Championships in Prague in 1977, Nadia finished second in horse jumping, behind a Soviet gymnast. A very questionable decision. Furious, the Romanian President, Nicolae Ceausescu, withdrew his athletes from the competition, causing a diplomatic crisis between the two countries. I also discovered the extent of the system set up by the Securitate to monitor the young Romanian star.
Why this surveillance?
Officially, it was to protect the young gymnast from aggression and the risk of kidnapping, which were real. In 1977, for example, she had escaped a kidnapping. But the Securitate had other, less avowed objectives: to prevent Nadia Comaneci from having contact with foreign secret agents and, above all, from leaving the country.
“Nadia Comaneci in the eye of the secret police”, by Stejarel Olaru
© / Robert Laffont Quebec
How did the Securitate go about monitoring her?
Every time she went abroad, there was at least one person from the Securitate in the Romanian delegation. His choreographer, for example, was a very effective informant. To convince him to spy on the gymnast, the Securitate agents had blackmailed him. They had threatened to accuse his girlfriend – French – of being a spy in the pay of Paris! Strong suspicions also weigh on his psychologist. I was able to realize, by reading the archives, that everything concerning the physical and mental state of the young prodigy arrived on the desk of the Securitate.
The Securitate was also watching his coach, Bela Karolyi…
Yes, the organization wanted to know everything about him and his wife, Marta. She didn’t trust them. She found them opportunists and doubted their loyalty to the regime. But Karolyi didn’t care: he had high-level support. In addition, he was a good coach. He pushed athletes beyond their limits. For him, the phrase “I can’t” did not exist. The – excellent – results of his gymnasts protected him from Securitate agents, who never arrested him. He was untouchable.
Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, 14, scores 10 at the Montreal Olympics on July 19, 1976
© / afp.com
An impunity which, you write, also allowed him to behave like a dictator vis-à-vis his young athletes…
He brutalized them and starved them. They were forced to steal food! In 1976, a journalist said, for example, that after very intense training, he was able to see what Nadia Comaneci was eating: a small piece of meat, two lettuce leaves and half an orange… The doctors were alarmed by these ruthless regimes. They also criticized the “practices” of Karolyi. One of them had advised him to stop hitting gymnasts on the head as soon as they made a mistake in their sequences, because “this process, very harmful, could lead to the loss of certain intellectual capacities”. But Karolyi didn’t care. His cruelty had no limit. During a tour in Mexico, he had placed empty Coke bottles in front of the rooms of young athletes and had accused them of having drunk them in secret! All that to be able to punish them… During this same trip, he had forbidden Nadia to eat for three days. The reason ? She had, he said, gained some weight. During these three days, he said to her: “You have to eat air now. But be careful, because even air makes you fat!”. To increase the torture of the young girls, he ate like an ogre in front of them. I found in the archives a letter that one of the gymnasts had sent to President Ceausescu. She told him about her daily hell and her condition as a slave. In the end, she begged him to intervene. But the letter was never sent to him… The bullying was daily. Do you know what Karolyi called Nadia Comaneci? The “medal cow”! All because she had received, at 14, the highest distinction of the Romanian regime, “Hero of the Socialist Republic”. He was jealous of her.
How far did this mistreatment go? Have young gymnasts been victims of sexual violence?
This subject is in the private domain, I did not record it in my book. However, I can confirm that I have indeed read such information in the reports of the Securitate, concerning Nadia Comaneci and other young gymnasts.
In 1989, Nadia had retired from sports, but she was no longer allowed to leave the country. So she decides to run away. How did the Romanian power react?
In the weeks following her defection, the Securitate hatched a plan to compromise her. She had gathered information about her intimate relationships and was about to unpack it all to the general public. Everything was planned: agents had to communicate defamatory information about Nadia Comaneci to foreign journalists who worked for the Securitate. But the regime fell before this plan was put into effect…
Today, Nadia Comaneci lives in the United States. How does she view this period?
She does not regret anything, she feels that she has done her duty. Unlike other gymnasts of her generation, for whom this period has remained a great pain, she has no resentment – not even towards her former coach who also lives in the United States. She even reviewed it…