GYMNASTICS STARS GIVE A BRIEF LOOK

Wednesday, August 11, 1993

Section: LOCAL SOUTH JERSEY
Page: S04

By Tia Swanson, INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT

Wasn't it just, not yesterday, but a few days ago, that Nadia Comaneci was standing up on that balance beam, stick-like and perfectly poised, with the bangs and the ponytail and the sad eyes that seemed to say so much about her short life in a Communist state?

Didn't we just watch her as she arched her head back and threw herself into the air with abandon, twirling backward through the air without hands to land perfectly and soundlessly on a piece of lumber just four inches wide?

So what was she doing peddling underwear in Cherry Hill yesterday?

Well, the answer is simple. Money.

But the story's complex.

Because, frankly, there've been a lot of yesterdays since we all fell in love with that 14-year-old girl at the 1976 Olympics, when she and her scores were, as a Time cover proclaimed, perfect.

There was the mess with the Florida roofer who brought her to this country in 1989. It turned out he was married, with children.

Then there was the news that Comaneci had been the girlfriend of the middle-age son of Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator who got his comeuppance, so the people said, when he and his wife were executed on Christmas Day 1989, two months after Comaneci arrived in America.

Then there were the stories about bulimia.

But all that happened before she met Bart Conner.

Remember him?

He was the blond, blue-eyed all-American, the one we all loved at the 1984 Olympics when he and his red-blooded compatriots captured Olympic gold.

Now, Connor and Comaneci are a couple.

They've got three houses, one in Los Angeles, one in Las Vegas and one in Oklahoma (yes, Oklahoma), where they also have a gymnastics school with 800 twirling tykes.

Conner does commentary - he was a journalism major in college - for ABC, ESPN and Turner broadcasting. Comaneci is the spokeswoman for an aerobic- stairs manufacturer. They both go around the country performing in exhibitions - the Ice Capades of the gymnastic world - and they both are spokespeople for Jockey Underwear.

That explains what they were doing in the intimate-apparel section of Strawbridge & Clothier yesterday, as large as gymnasts can be in life, gamely signing autographs for more than 300 eager fans.

But they weren't signing any old autographs. Both Conner and Comaneci had very large posters of themselves in Jockey underwear. In hers, Comaneci was wearing pale pink French-cut briefs, a cotton-lycra crop top and thigh-high stockings. She looked older than she does in reality.

In his, Conner was wearing a bright blue low-rise brief.

Before they signed autographs, Conner did some work on the pommel horse in the mall's courtyard. He wore a sleeveless muscle suit with the American flag.

When Comaneci congratulated him on a move by saying, "He doesn't look any different than he did 15 years ago, does he?" Lynne Natale of Pennsauken almost involuntarily murmured, "Just as good."

Comaneci couldn't work out because she had a knee injury, so she came in a jazzy sleeveless pantsuit - backless.

She grew emotional when a man in the audience asked her how she liked America. "How do I like America," she said. "This was a dream for me to come. It was not easy for me to come. It was just two months before the revolution. . . . I love America."

The last woman to the autograph table yesterday was Aurora Boieru Humita. Humita is a gymnastics teacher in Mount Laurel, but 20 years ago, she was a teammate of Comaneci's. Humita had trouble with an injury and never made the Olympic team. Comaneci, well, we remember.

"She was wonderful," Humita said. "We were very proud."

Yesterday, the women broke into rapid-fire Romanian. Comaneci signed the underwear poster with special care and talked excitedly for a while.

Humita felt her stomach turn; 20 years it had been, and the face, she said, was still the same.

Although they had been teammates at a special school for future Olympians for three years, Comaneci didn't remember her.

But Humita is not the judgmental type.

What about Nadia, she was asked, all that's happened?

"For me, it's like forgive," Humita replied. "If I'm in the same position, maybe I do the same thing."

Corrections:

"...Comaneci had been the girlfriend of the middle-age son of Nicolae Ceausescu"

A very creditable source says that, to *some* extent, this was true. Though not his girlfriend, to refuse someone like Nicu Ceausescu in those days could mean death. It's OK, Nadia, nothing held against you :) We'd all rather have an alive Nadia, right? But keep in mind, until we hear it from Nadia, don't believe everything you read!

"Nicolae Ceausescu... [who was] excecuted... two months after Comaneci arrived in America."

One month

"Then there were the stories about bulimia."

This is a rumor that may or may not be true. There is not enough information on this to tell.