The Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, at 14 years old, shocked the world and made history in global sports by achieving the mythical “10” at the Montreal Olympic Games for the first time.
The maximum score had never occurred at the most important sporting event in the world. It was on July 18, 1976, when the young Comaneci received a “10” in the uneven bars final.
No one was expecting it—neither the audience, nor the judges, nor the computers of the time. What appeared was “1.00”.
“It wasn’t 10, it was a point zero because the computers couldn’t handle it. They weren’t prepared for the 10, so they didn’t program an extra space after the decimal to accommodate the 10. They said it was a point zero or a hundred, which meant nothing in gymnastics,” the athlete told CNN years later.
It was a dream Olympic Games for Comaneci. Seven “10” scores, three gold medals (uneven bars, balance beam, and “all around”), plus a silver medal in the team event and a bronze on the floor.
Nadia Comaneci, who was trained by the famous duo Bela and Marta Karolyi, who “created” several world and Olympic champions, was not a stranger when she arrived in Canada for the Olympics: she had already won four gold medals at the European Championships in Norway in 1975.
Then, at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the gymnast secured two more gold medals, in addition to several at European and World level during this timeframe.
With an enviable resume, Nadia Comaneci retired from competition in 1981, at the age of 19.
She left the scene early, but she had also arrived early. Her love for gymnastics was born at the age of six in her hometown of Onesti when she visited a gym for the first time.
“I didn’t know I wanted to be a gymnast. I loved the gym because it looked like a high-tech amusement park with mats and many things to hang on,” she said in the same CNN interview.
In 1989, just before the revolution that overthrew Nicolae Ceaucescu in Romania, Comaneci defected to the United States, where she opened a gymnastics school.
Years later, the former athlete recounted that she is often questioned about the definition of perfection, she who achieved the “10”. And she answers: “There isn’t one, there’s no definition of perfection. At a specific moment, when I was 14 years old, I did something people didn’t expect.”
Currently, scoring is done differently. The execution score is combined with a difficulty score. Another change is the minimum age for athletes: 16 years.