Celebrity Featured: Nadia Comaneci
About Nadia Comaneci
Nadia Comaneci was born on November 12, 1961 in Onesti, a factory town in the mountains of Romania. She was an active child who enjoyed running and jumping.
Nadia was only seven years old when she entered the Romanian National Junior Gymnastics Championships. She was the youngest gymnast and she still placed 13th. She returned to the National Junior Championships a year later and won first place at only 8 years old.
In 1975, at age 13, Nadia was old enough to compete as a senior. She won one silver and four gold medals at the European Championships. One of the gold medals was for the all-round competition. Nadia was the youngest girl to have ever won it.
Since she began gymnastics, Nadia had dreamed of competing in the Olympics. In 1976, at age 14, she got her big chance at Montreal in Canada. In her favorite event the uneven parallel bars, she went forward with such force that it absolutely dazzled the judges. The audience was quiet, waiting for her score. Suddenly, the scoreboard lit up with a 1.00. No one understood how this wonderfully talented little girl could have scored only a tenth of a point. No one ever scored a perfect 10 before and the scoreboard didn't have enough room!
She went on to score seven more perfect 10's and went home with 3 gold medals, and one each of silver and bronze. In 1984 Nadia returned to the Olympics as a coach of the Romanian gymnastics team, and in 1994 she donated $120,000 to the team. In 1996 she married Bart Conners, another Olympic champion and they now live in Norman, Oklahoma and run a gymnastics school.