STRONG and VITAL No 5

Nadia Comaneci In November, she turned 63 years old What is the Former Olympic Champion in Gymnastics Doing Now?

Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci became famous during the 1976 Summer Olympics in Mont real (Canada), where she won five medals, including three gold medals in the all-around, uneven bars, and balance beam. With the team, she won a sil ver medal in the all-around and a bronze medal in the floor exercise. She became the youngest gym nast ever to triumph at the Olympic Games. The world was surprised and delighted by her skills. The then 14-year-old Romanian gymnast was hardly noticed at the beginning of her debut. After that, how ever, Nadia Comaneci changed women’s gymnas tics with her breathtaking performances. She was the first woman to be awarded the top score of 10 for her perfection in Olympic gymnastics in 1976. On this occasion, she even collected six more 10s. At the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, Coma neci won two gold medals on the balance beam and floor exercise, as well as two silver medals in the team competition and individual all-around. Behind her sporting success on the inter national stage, however, lay a stolen child hood and a sacrificed life that was interwo ven with the politics and society of those years. The athlete lost her childhood to poverty and the dicta torship of communism, as President Nicolae Ceause scu took her under his wing and turned her into a poli tical symbol of revenge and power. He locked her up in a gilded palace and exploited her for political purpo ses, while the young girl was mercilessly trained to ever more extreme ends. She began to feel like a prisoner. “Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. This is why I win.”

After dedicating a large part of her life to gymnastics, the Olym pic champion left the sport for good in 1984 and worked as a coach for the Romanian

team before fleeing via Hungary to the United States in 1989. She became an American citizen in 2001. Together with her husband, a gold medalist in artistic gymnastics at the 1984 Summer Olympics, whom she married in 1996, she continued to promote gymnastics. In 1993, Comaneci was inducted into the Inter national Gymnastics Hall of Fame. In 1999, she received the World Sports Award of the Cen tury after being voted Athlete of the Century. The retired gymnast is now Honorary Presi dent of the Romanian Gymnastics Federa tion and the Romanian Olympic Committee. Comaneci is still actively involved in numerous philan thropic causes. She initiated and financed the Nadia Comaneci Children’s Clinic in Bucharest, which offers Romanian children low-cost or free medical care. She is heavily involved in social work and has arduously rebuilt her relationship with her home country. In 1994, she returned to Romania for a visit. She was greeted as a national hero—com munism had fallen, and the world had changed. The former gymnastics champion now lives in Oklahoma (USA) with her husband Bart Con ner and their son Dylan, born in 2006. As an ent repreneur and journalist, she fights for a better world and promotes a healthy, balanced lifestyle for athletes who want to become professionals.

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Strong and Vital No. 5