Life Story

Nadia Elena Comaneci was born on the 12th of November, 1961, in Onesti, Romania. Onesti is a town in the hilly edge of the Carpathian mountains, which she described as "magical". Nadia used to swing on the branches of fruit trees at her grandparents house, across the Trotus river from where she lived. She said "a swing around a bough is no different to one on the bars." At kindergarten Nadia was taught the basics of gymnastics and later her mother enrolled her into the Flame, a local gym club, after she had broken several seats by bouncing on them. She was coached by Munteanu Gherche. Nadia was discovered by Bela and Martha Karolyi as a 6 year old, she and a friend were doing cartwheels in the school yard and Bela was going around the schools, looking for promising gymnasts. After seeing Nadia in the play ground Bela lost Nadia once the school bell rang. He went around the classes 3 times looking for her and on the last time he asked "Who loves gymnastics?" and two little girls said "We, we!". One of those girls became a ballerina and the other was Nadia. Nadia competed in the Romanian national championships when she was 9, she fell of the beam 3 times and Martha cuffed her on the head. Bela gave her an Eskimo doll to remind her never to do badly again, and she never did. In 1974 Bela took some gymnasts to Paris, but because they were so young and small they weren't allowed to compete against gymnasts such as Lyudmilla Torischeva, the Olympic champion. But bela sneaked them into the gym and hid them behind some mats, the crowd loved Nadia and at the 1975 European championships she won 4 gold medals. In 1976, in Montreal, Nadia bet gymnastics sweetheart, Olga Korbut and scored the first 10 in Olympic gymnastic history. She got a perfect mark 7 times. She won the all around gold, uneven bars gold, beam gold, team silver and floor bronze. At the next Olympics, in Moscow Nadia won the floor gold, beam gold, all around silver and team silver. she could have won the all around gold, but the Soviet and Polish judges were against the Romanians and gave her a 9.85 instead of a ten and the all around gold went to Soviet, Yelena Davydova. Bela was furious and spat at the judges. Nadia had a 9 year long career and she won a lot of titles, including, 1 world and 3 European championships. She has also won the American and Chunichi cups. She was the youngest person to get her countries Hero of  Socialist Labor award. In 1989 she defected from Romania and settled in Canada, then later Oklahoma, USA. She married former USA gymnast, Bart Conner.

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