Always after the top, Comaneci seeks freedom

Memo: Editor`s Note: Hal Bock covered the 1976 Olympics for The Associated Press and was in Montreal when Nadia Comaneci stunned the gymnastics world with the first perfect "10" ever awarded in the Games.

She was a tiny thing, less than 5 feet tall, just 88 pounds, and Nadia Comaneci seemed dwarfed by the uneven parallel bars at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.

Nadia mounted the bars and whipped her small body over, around and through them as if she had been born over a gym floor. There was precision, grace, beauty to her performance and when she was done, the 14-year-old Romananian pixie had made history, receiving the first score of 10 ever awarded in the Olympics.

"Nyet," said the Soviet coach, Larissa Latynina, whose performers had always dominated gymnastics. "I question the performance. I can see a 9.5, but it should not have been a 10. There were some flaws. It was not perfect." Nadia shrugged off the criticism and the uproar her momentous score had created. Ten was nothing special for her, she said. She had done it 19 times before in lesser competitions. And, as if to convince Latynina, she would do it again.

The next day, there were 10s on the balance beam and bars. In team competition, Comaneci had another 10 on the uneven bars and another on the balance beam, giving her five perfect scores for the Games.

"Of course the gymnnast tries for perfection," the coach said. ``But even the greatest have inadequacies.``

Not Nadia. Not in 1976. She would take home three gold medals, including the all-around, besting Olga Korbut, the great Soviet gymnast. To those who watched the confrontation, it was as if the gymnastics torch was being passed to the next generation. Korbut had been the star at Munich in 1972, winner of three golds and a silver. Now, Comaneci had three golds of her own.

She became a media star at those Games, even though she was not happy with that turn of events. ``I came here prepared to do gymnastics, not to be interviewed,`` she said curtly.

At 14, the new star was already feeling a bit burned out. She had taken up gymnastics as a 7-year-old, saying, "It was fun then. It was like playing a game."

"Now it is work,`` she said. "I must practice three to four hours a day. Of course, I enjoy the sport, but I must work very hard."

By her own timetable, Nadia should have been done by 1980, when the Olympics were held in Moscow. But the year before, despite hand surgery, she won two gold medals at the European championships and two more in the World Cup.

In Moscow, a new more mature Comaneci, wearing a touch of eye makeup and manicured nails, won two more gold medals in the balance beam and floor exercise. But she was in the middle of a scoring controversy when her coach, Bela Karolyi, accused officials of plotting to arrange a lower score for Nadia in the all-around so that Soviet gymnast Elena Davydova would win the gold.

In 1982, she took a year off and when she returned to competition, she knew she was stretching her limit. "It`s pretty difficult to regain the lost ground," she said. "I'm not 14 any longer."

The next year, at age 22, Comaneci announced her retirement from competition, her career over after 21 gold medals and seven world titles. At the farewell ceremony, Nadia, so composed and controlled during her performances, broke down in the middle of a prepared speech before a sold-out crowd of 5,000 at the Sports Palace in Bucharest.

She went into coaching and served as a role model for Romanian youth until Wednesday when she fled the country, telling border guards in Hungary she was leaving "for the sake of freedom."

"Comaneci had never displayed emotion during the competition...."

Hahahaha... yes she did! She didn't display as much emotion while she was on the apparatus because she was concentrating on her routine. On the sidelines she was as emotional as any other gymnast!