Nadia Elena Comăneci was born in Onești, Romania. She was an active child, and while in kindergarten, her mother enrolled her in the local gymnastic team. At 6, the gymnastic coach Béla Károlyi identified her potential, and she became one of the first students at his and his wife’s experimental gymnastics school.
At 9, she began competing with her hometown team and became the youngest gymnast to win the Romanian Nationals. The following year, in her first international competition, she won her first all-around title and gold for her team. Over the next few years, she won gold medals in several national and international competitions, including the European all-around title and a score of 10 at the American Cup.
At 14, at the 1976 summer Olympics in Montreal, Comăneci made history when she was awarded the first perfect score of 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars. In the remainder of the Olympic games, she received six more 10 and earned gold medals for the individual all-around, the balance beam, and uneven bars routines; she won a bronze medal for her floor exercises and a silver medal with her team.
The following year, she won the European all-around title again. Afterward, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation separated her from her long-time coaches, the Károlyis, and sent her to train in Bucharest’s sports complex. This change, combined with the physical and psychological struggles of puberty, affected her performance and mental health, and she tried to commit suicide.
After Comăneci finished fourth place at the 1978 World Championships, she was allowed to reunite with her coaches. Under their guidance, her health and performance improved, and in 1979, she made history by winning her third consecutive European all-around title. Later that year, just before the World Championships, she was hospitalized for blood poisoning. She left the hospital against the doctor’s order to compete in the tournament. She won a score of 9.95 for her beam routine and helped her national team receive its first gold. Afterward, she returned to the hospital for a surgical procedure.
In the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, 19 years old Comăneci won two gold medals for her floor and beam exercises and two silver medals for the individual all-around and the team all-around.
In 1981, the Gymnastics Federation organized a tour throughout the US titled Nadia ’81. On the last day of the tour, her coaches, Béla and Márta Károlyi, defected and sought asylum in the US. They offered Comăneci to join them, but she chose to return home to Romania.
On her return, the Romanian officials, who feared that she would defect, began to monitor her, preventing her from leaving the country, with only a few exceptions, like the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where she served as an observer. That same year, she officially retired from competitive gymnastics.
On November 27, 1989, Comăneci defected Romania. She crossed the Hungary–Romania border and traveled to Austria, where she took a plane to the US.
In 1991, she settled in Oklahoma, where she helped her then-friend and later husband, the fellow gymnast Bart Conner, to establish the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy.
She remains involved with the gymnastics world, serving in various positions, such as the honorary president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, the sports ambassador of Romania, the honorary president of the Romanian Olympic Committee, and a member of the International Gymnastics Federation Foundation.
With her husband, she manages their Gymnastics Academy, founded a production company named Perfect 10, runs several sports equipment shops, and serves as editor of the International Gymnast Magazine. Comăneci is also a philanthropist, raising contributions for several charities, and funded the construction and operation of the Nadia Comăneci Children’s Clinic in Bucharest.
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