Nadia Comaneci

Nadia Comaneci (http://www.ixdaily.com/grind/a5d5166ce9834516e552c ())

Nadia Comaneci was the first gymnast to score a perfect 10.00 in the Olympics. She has inspired many young gymnasts and still does today. She completed her first Olympics at age 14 in Montreal, Canada, and her second in Moscow, Russia. 

Nadia was born in Onesti, Romania in the year 1961. She had already fallen in love with gymnastics at age 6. Coach Bela Karolyi had gone to her school to look for young girls that have a gymnastics talent and saw her and a friend doing cartwheels on the playground. He invited her to start gymnastics at his gym. At competitions, she would fall a lot, but instead of discouraging her, it motivated her to be better. In the Romanian National Championships, Nadia scored 13th place at age 8. Bela Karolyi gave her a doll and told her to never score that bad again. She didn't.

Nadia on the balance beam (blogspot.com ())

Her first Olympic games were in Montreal, Canada in 1976. She was only 14 years old. Her routine on the uneven bars was awarded a perfect score of 10.00. It was the first time a perfect score had been made in the history of the Olympics. The scoreboard was not big enough to display her score of 10.00, but instead showed a 1.00! She became the darling of the gymnastics world and continued to sweep people off their feet by scoring 6 more perfect scores in that competition. 

In 1981, Bela Karolyi and his wife Marta had visited the USA for a gymnastics tour, and defected from Romania. It was hard for Nadia being without her coach. She started thinking of defecting, or running away from Romania and in 1984, she retired from gymnastics. In 1989, Nadia met a man who helped Romanians escape the rule of Nicolae Ceaucescu into America. She and 5 other Romanians made the terrible walk for 6 hours in the dead of night through the freezing cold of winter to make it to the Hungarian border. She left her family, dolls, and medals behind. She was soon on a plane to New York to start her new life. When she was in the U.S. she stayed with Alexandru Stefu, one of her old friends. After Stefu died in a snorkeling accident, Comaneci moved to Oklahoma and lived with one of Bela Karolyi's friends, Paul Ziert. She met up with Bart Conner, one of Ziert's students and an old friend of hers from the Olympics. They soon started dating and then got married in Romania. It was called "The gymnastics world's version of a royal wedding."

Nadia Comaneci is my hero because she is the role model of what a gymnast should be. Brave, strong, and hard-working. She set the record for the first perfect score in the Olympics and showed incredible bravery while defecting to the United States.