Expect lots of my posts on this blog to be about Nadia Comaneci, the greatest gymnast of all time.
If you have been living under a rock, or if you are a child, you might not know that Nadia Comaneci was the first gymnast in Olympic history to achieve a score of 10.0. Since no competitors were expected to receive a perfect score, the scoreboard could not even accommodate the perfect score and flashed a 1.00 which confused everyone, especially Nadia. Nadia went on to score six more 10.0s in those 1976 Olympic games, and won five medals, three of them gold. She won two more gold and 2 silver medals in Moscow, bringing her Olympic medal count to 9.
The reason I love Nadia, besides here remarkable success in gymnastics, is because of her attitude. She seems to be one of the only, if not THE only, elite gymnast who has not gone media crazy after succeeding in major competition. I have never had the honor to meet her personally, but in every interview I have ever watched, Nadia seems completely humble and almost surprised with her success. It is obvious that she never went into a competition expecting anything or thinking she was better than everyone else. She stated in one interview that she felt she received that first 10 not because her performance was the greatest ever, but simply because the judges felt she had performed better than a previous gymnast who they had given a 9.95, and Nadia had performed a bit better. She also mentioned that one of her teammates had also scored a perfect 10, and that she didn't understand why she was the one to receive all of the attention.
The OTHER thing that I think is so great and special about Nadia is she is one of the only elite gymnasts who has stayed fit! So many gymnasts turn into fat pigs almost immediately upon retiring. But Nadia is still looking super fit!
So this is why I am currently obsessing over the best gymnast of all time, Nadia Comaneci.
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