It's been 40 years since the perfect 10.
The first time in the history of the sport, a perfect 10.
You're just in awe, you want to replicate the exact same thing
but it is very difficult and that's why
she's the only one that has gotten it.
You have to give Nadia a tremendous amount of the credit
for the boom of American female gymnastics.
It was heroic, what she did,
and the risks that she took.
By the time when I got to defect,
I think that was the only time in my adult life
when I had no fear.
(LEGENDS LIVE ON: NADIA COMĂNECI)
I don't think that kids have any fear.
I used to climb trees a lot
and I was going to the highest tree and everybody around me
was, "You can't go there because you may fall,"
and I wanted to go there because I just felt
that it was exciting,
and when I entered the gym for the first time in my life,
I thought this is the place
where I could do things that makes me feel good.
Béla Károlyi and Márta were my coaches at the Olympics.
I've worked with them since I remember,
when I was six, seven years old
and I always say that my success happened
because Béla and Márta were coaching
at that particular time
and it was just a happy triangle that connected us.
I went out in the kindergarten elementary school
to recruit young athletes for my gymnastic group.
"Hey, who can do a cartwheel?"
Two little girls from behind, way behind in the class,
"Yeah, we do, like to see it?"
These are the ones. I said, "Tell your mummy
"we want to talk to you about gymnastics,
"to being involved in the gymnastic programme."
"Yes, yes, we are going to be there, OK, OK."
And that was the first time I see Nadia.
Physically she was very gifted of strength, agility, endurance
and not quite that much flexibility,
which we had to work constant on that one,
to make the skills with big amplitude.
The way she responded, the way I said, "10 push-ups,"
she made 15 push-ups.
I said, "Where is this strength coming from, honey?
"I made that 10."
"Yeah, but I want to do better," up, up, up.
Unbelievable. I said, "Yes, now that's the type of kid,
"the one I dream to have."
(NORMAN, OKLAHOMA)
Hello. Hi, guys.
Can we stick our nose in here and see how you guys are doing?
Not a week goes by where some woman doesn't corner me
somewhere and say, "I need to tell you something,
"your wife was my biggest inspiration."
I meet people everywhere who want to say something
about where they were when Nadia got her 10
and what it meant to them.
She's become sport royalty,
this icon quality about her that you can't deny.
She is an icon of the sport,
she transformed the sport in the United States
by creating so much interest in it.
And I remember one time I met First Lady Michelle Obama,
and Nadia and I were standing there talking to her
and she said, "Nadia, do you know what you did for me?"
She said, "When I saw you do what you do,
"it made me feel like I could do anything, too,
"if I just worked hard enough."
When I left Romania at the airport
and I was together with the entire team
that competed the Olympics in 1976,
I remember I said to a journalist
that I hope to win a medal and if it's possible to be gold.
(MONTREAL 1976: WOMEN'S VAULT)
(MONTREAL 1976: WOMEN'S FLOOR EXERCISES)
(MONTREAL 1976: UNEVEN BARS)
My routine on the uneven bars,
the first routine actually that I got the 10,
was a compulsory routine.
In the time when I was competing
we had to do compulsory also,
which is the same routine at each event,
which is basically sounds kind of boring.
But I think that my routine was a little bit different,
even though they were exactly the same,
I did something that I call the Nadia Touch,
which is every little skill that I had to do,
I add a little more amplitude, I made it bigger.
Usually I don't watch the scoreboard
because I'm able to give myself a score
on the basis of how I felt I did.
So I landed and I thought I did a good routine.
I didn't even think about 10.
I was hoping that I was going to get 9.9
or something close to that...
..and just because I heard the big noise in the arena,
I turn around and I see the scoreboard, 1.00,
which is very confusing to everybody.
Prior to that Olympic Games,
Omega, which was the official timer,
had said to the International Gymnastics Federation,
"Is there any reason why we have to be prepared to put a 10
"on our scoreboards?"
And the people at the Federation said,
"No, nobody's ever going to get a 10 in our sport".
So the only score they could put up
to even approximate that was 1.00.
The reaction of the crowd was incredible.
The announcer was saying,
"Ladies and gentlemen, the first time in the history
"of the sport, a perfect 10."
Nobody expected that from us,
nobody really wanted to pretend
that we are expecting the perfect 10 -
but then, they came out from seven judges, a perfect 10.
I said, "Yes, that's great."
Next event, on the beam.
Balance beam is probably one of the most difficult events
in gymnastics, because it's very, very narrow
and you cannot hide a mistake...
..but it was also my favourite event for some reason,
I'm not sure why.
(MONTREAL 1976: BALANCE BEAM)
Beautiful performance, back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth on the beam.
Solid like a rock and with her superior attitude, you know.
She was already displaying this proud attitude.
When I saw the score of the balance beam,
I knew there was a 10.
All my 10s were uneven bars, balance beam,
uneven bars, balance beam, so I felt like going back
and forth during four days of competition.
Later on when six more times came out the perfect 10,
we started to get used to it.
"Yeah, there it is again, that's only 10."
A perfect 10 became absolute perfection.
I don't remember prior to Nadia
anybody saying perfection was a 10.
In our execution you can get a 10
but I don't think the judges want to give it out.
As close as you get, they're just like,
"No, maybe this was wrong,"
so it is very difficult -
but she did impact the whole entire sport of gymnastics,
so everyone still strives to do that.
Actually I didn't know there was no 10,
I didn't know I was the first one to do that.
I knew I was good, but I didn't know I was that good.
If you are able to put your best routine at the right time,
I think that's the definition of a champion.
After so many, many, many hours of training,
you kind of know what has to go through your mind
when you're up there and you know this is the competition
that everybody wants to be at,
and you know that you have this chance only every four years,
there is no redo.
It was just like everything was lining up for me
at that particular time.
I think that I was in a great shape at the right time.
When we landed in Bucharest, when I saw so many people,
I think there were 10,000 people at the airport,
I went back in the plane because I didn't understand
why are so many people at the airport.
So I didn't understand the magnitude of the Olympics.
I mean, I knew what the Olympics were,
but I didn't understand that...
Did everybody have time to watch it?
Thousands and thousands of people were at the airport
waiting for us and I could not believe it.
I absolutely could not believe it -
and I seen that there was, like, one of the major speeches
or Ceausescu did not have that many people.
Gymnast, Nadia Comăneci.
I met Ceausescu one time after my Olympics
because we did a big celebration of the Olympics
and they awarded us.
I mean, it's an honour,
I am too young to understand what's going on.
For everybody it is an honour
to be honoured by the president of the country.
These are some of the photos with the presidents,
Bill Clinton, George Bush.
We went to a few functions
and also at the White House for special Olympics.
This is a golden disc that I received
after the Olympics in '76.
This music was used in Romania after the Olympics
when a television crew came to do a piece on me,
and they were looking for a music
that would fit the slow motion of my balance beam routine,
and they picked this music
which had a different name before.
Now it's called Nadia's Theme -
and because that show became very popular,
Barry De Vorzon, who wrote this, has changed the name
from the original to Nadia's Theme.
(OLYMPIC GAMES MOSCOW 1980)
Pressure? No, I had no pressure when I was 14 and a half,
but I did have some when I was 18 and I competed in Moscow.
I wanted to be the best,
because I knew I can be the best.
When I was 14 and a half and I competed in '76,
I was just a child that nobody knew pretty much
what I'm coming from or where Romania is on the map.
They learned that after the Olympics in '76.
Going to the Olympics in 1980 I was a grown-up,
I was an 18-year-old
and I made a mistake at the preliminary on the uneven bars,
which was my best event.
I already knew that I was going to go down because I rushed it,
I had to wait a little more and I didn't
and then that's what happened.
It was a learning experience for me, the 1980 Olympics.
I ended up with two gold and two silver,
I mean, that's pretty good.
Yeah, I could have done better but it was still pretty good.
So I put it in a bag of experiences.
Actually I knew that the 1980 would be
basically my last Olympic Games,
I didn't see myself being around for 1984.
I think that I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.
I didn't even know what I was going to do
when I was done with gymnastics.
I think my idea was to become a doctor.
Well, this is something that's very interesting,
is the entire gymnastic archive.
Starting from 1956,
everything that's happened in gymnastics
all the way to today is here.
I believe that this is the biggest in the world,
nobody has anything close to this.
This is the one from when I was still performing in the '90s.
It's good to have them,
I mean, you can see that some of them have a yellowish colour
because it goes back to the '50s
and it's awesome.
I think as the time goes, I value more my accomplishments
because I didn't realise when I was that young
that this was such a big deal.
We have a gymnastic school,
actually the gymnastic school has been here
before I even arrived.
It's about almost 1,500 kids who do gymnastics
and probably 30 coaches or more.
Look at that, pretty darn good. Straighten your legs.
It's kind of funny because Nadia's so much more famous
globally than I am that people just assume
why isn't it the Nadia Comăneci Gymnastic School?
And maybe we'd be better off if it was
but, you know, we already had a thriving business
as it was the Bart Conner Academy, so.
We've already had at least 40 athletes
from our programme here
get full scholarships at major universities,
from Stanford to Syracuse and a lot of places in between.
Hi, Karen.
These are the grips that we make in the back
that I told you about,
for little, tiny little kids all the way to bigger ones.
And here are some of the costumes for the show
and over there are all the fabrics for all the leotards
that Karen is making for us now
because gymnasts need new leotards
and colourful leotards and something like that.
That's a new pattern I'm working on.
I see, yeah, I like it.
Yeah, that's nice, the combination.
I can see it over there, yeah.
So all the fabrics and all the sewing and...
Cool stuff.
I don't know what people think about communism.
I found out that I'm watched.
Everybody carried the burden of the communist system.
With the difficulty of making progress, to step forward,
to be recognised and to be compensated for your effort.
People at that time did not even talk about uprising,
asking for their rights, asking for their recognition.
They just make you disappear like you've never been around.
We were in a gymnastic tour in 1981
and my coach and his wife decided not to come back
and they stayed in the United States.
What I didn't like was what happened after Béla left.
I've heard that I've got a lot of invitations to go,
to travel to places and I was not allowed to.
So I understood that this will probably be
the end of my travelling, you know, life.
I didn't think that was fair, so I thought this is enough.
I have an opportunity to do something
and I'm going to do it.
She had very little access to information
about what was going on in the world outside.
It was a tremendous leap of faith that she took
when she left Romania.
By the time when I got to defect,
I think that was the only time in my adult life
when I had no fear, and I think I had to be a little crazy
and a little bit insane
to do something that's basically dangerous.
Go, you know, in the middle of the night
and maybe risking your life.
It was like doing something in a movie,
not thinking about what can happen.
I think that we were lucky that we made it,
that we didn't get shot and everything else.
I don't think about that right now because it's just,
we made it all the way
but sometimes I'm like, wow, you know,
yeah, it was a big deal.
She thought she was going to stay in Hungary for a while
but they wanted her out of the old Soviet Bloc completely
and so she went to Austria
and then asked for asylum in the United States.
I had known Nadia and we had become acquaintances,
but nothing really more than that -
and she's an important symbol for our sport,
and then we saw that she left Romania
and then she was in Hungary and I thought,
well, maybe she's going to stay there.
Then the next day I see that she left Hungary
and went to Austria
and asked for political refugee status in the United States,
because she showed up at the US embassy in Vienna
and said, "I want to go to America" -
and within hours they had her on a plane
to the United States.
So now she calls Bart, who was one of the few people
she really knows in the United States, and Bart said,
"Well, come on to Oklahoma and we'll sort this all out."
I was like a lot of gymnastic friends and fans of hers
who wanted to offer a helping hand.
Well, I knew Bart from the time when I was competing.
I knew him as a gymnast...
..but I reconnected with Bart and his coach at the time,
and our manager now, Paul Ziert,
and they were involved with gymnastics.
They had all these facilities,
they were still doing gymnastic shows
and that's how I reconnected.
I was doing gymnastics exhibitions for years
after I finished competing.
When Nadia came to the US,
along with my business partner, Paul Ziert,
he said, "Hey, give her a call,
"see if she wants to do some gymnastic shows."
So I called her up and she said, "No, I don't think so,
"I haven't done gymnastics in years, I don't want to do it,"
and I kind of finally talked her into it
and we did one or two shows together
and she started enjoying it
and we started building our friendship from there.
When I first met Nadia, it was kind of a funny story.
We actually met in Madison Square Garden in March of 1976
and I remember it distinctly
because it happened to be my birthday
and it was a meet called the American Cup.
It was a very important international invitational,
top athletes from all around the world,
and she and I won the final competition
on the final day together
and we stood side by side on the awards podium
and we held up these big silver American cup trophies
that we won - and I'll never forget it
because a photographer saw us together and he said,
"Get a little closer together, maybe give her a little kiss
"on the cheek, it will make a nice picture", whatever.
So I gave her a little kiss on the cheek.
We were laughing at that time
because both of them were so lovely, so cute.
We were always joking,
"You guys, you would make a great couple".
"Oh, no, no, what are you talking about?"
Youth is innocence, it was so lovely seeing them.
Bart Conner is one of the nicest people on earth,
so she could not have wound up with a nicer person.
Well, I think the fact that we are gymnasts connected us.
We think alike and different
which makes our connection much more interesting.
Well, this is the office that I'm not supposed to go in,
but Dylan, this is the office of our son, Dylan.
He is 10 years old and he is a toy collector.
Everything is in here.
Every little thing from roller blades, roller skates
to candy machines to Pac-Man
to anything you name,
guns, Star Wars stuff,
oh, and a photo of me.
The important thing that we do right now is parenting.
All our work that we do to be sure that our 10-year-old
has a great education and nice environment
and he's happy.
One time he came from kindergarten,
he was four and a half.
"Mom, Dad, do you know you're famous?"
We didn't tell, you know, we went to the Olympics,
we did this and this and this and this.
He goes right.
I like the feeling of connecting with kids
because I know how bad they want to do something
and I know how difficult it is to do a lot of things still.
I like to see a happy face.
I love to go back to Romania,
actually I go back six times a year.
We created a clinic for underserved kids, a hospital...
..where parents who can't afford to treat their kids
when they are sick, they come there.
It's not only kids, it's also elderly.
I am happy that I could help.
Every sport says you should compete like Nadia,
you should be the best.
Nadia's name is coming up everywhere,
on every corner, on every mouth
and everyone who loves the sport
first of all thinks about Nadia
because she's representing the best among the very best.
You have to give Nadia, just who Nadia is and what she did
and what she represented,
a tremendous amount of the indirect credit
for the boom of American female gymnastics.
Growing up you always heard about the perfect 10
from Nadia, so you see the video and you're just in awe.
You want to replicate this exact same thing that she did
and hopefully one day get a 10, but it is very difficult
and that's why she's the only one that has gotten it.
The United States has been the dominant country in the world
in women's gymnastics since 1984
and who would have ever thought that?
We have pretty much dominated over the years.
We look up to her so much because of what she did
and she strived us to be the best that we can be.
Gymnastics was a way for me to live a different life.
It defined my life in a way that I couldn't even think
what I would have done if I didn't do gymnastics.
When I started, I went in to play in a gym
just because it was cool to do flips
and just because I could do things that my mom
wouldn't let me do at home.
So out of just finding a place to spend my energy,
I ended up going to two Olympic Games
and scoring the first perfect 10.
That was not in the script for me.
I don't know what I would have said
if somebody would say to me,
"You know that if you go to the gym and start to do this sport,
"you know, maybe you will be able to make history."
I'm like, what does he mean?
So it just, it just happened.
I just enjoy what I do right now
and be happy that my family is OK
and be happy that I am able to travel
and represent gymnastics.
Because every time I go somewhere
and I meet with people and we talk about things,
I think my name connects with the sport,
you know, Nadia, gymnastics and Romania.
(AFTER THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION AND FALL OF CEAUSESCU, NADIA
WAS ABLE TO RETURN TO ROMANIA AND REUNITE WITH HER FAMILY)
(NADIA COMANECI WAS THE FIRST EVER GYMNASTS IN OLYMPIC HISTORY
TO RECEIVE A PERFECT 10)
(NADIA TIRELESSLY CONTINUES TO WORK WITH YOUNG PEOPLE
TO ENSURE ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE AND SPORTS COACHING
IN ROMANIA AND THE USA)
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