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A perfect 10!

Broadcast Date: July 19, 1976

Little Nadia Comaneci from Romania has just made Olympic history. She's earned the first ever perfect score of 10.0 in Olympic gymnastics. The tiny 14-year-old is quickly becoming the darling of the Montreal Games. In this CBC Radio clip, a clearly impressed Peter Gzowski recounts Nadia's perfect performance on the uneven parallel bars. Even though he's a newcomer to the sport, Gzowski knew right away that her routine couldn't have been any better.

A perfect 10!

• Nadia Comaneci was born in Onesti, Romania in 1961.
• She was discovered by coaches Marta and Bela Karolyi at the age of six, and was soon put into a rigorous training program.
• When competing in Montreal, "little Nadia" weighed only 86 pounds and stood 4'11 ½ " tall.

• After the performance described by Gzowski on July 18, 1976, Comaneci went on to score six more perfect 10s during the Montreal Games. Altogether, she won five medals in Montreal: three golds (uneven bars, balance beam and all-around competition), one silver (team competition), and one bronze (floor exercise).

• When Comaneci received her first 10 on the uneven bars, the scoreboard wasn't capable of displaying 10.00, so it said 1.00. It took a few second for people to realize it was meant to be 10.00. The computerized scoreboard system in Montreal had to be quickly redesigned to accommodate 10s.
• After her first 10 on July 18, tickets for the rest of the gymnastics events became highly coveted. To see Comaneci, people were spending $100 to get $16 tickets.

• Comaneci was clearly the shining star of the Montreal Games. A Newsweek article from August 1976 stated: "amid the political feuds, cheating scandals and impromptu squabbles that have become semi-official Olympic events, Nadia in flight was Montreal's doll-like symbol of what's still right with the Games."

• Some weren't won over by Comaneci, however, and found her perfection too mechanical and almost creepy. In a somewhat negative CBC Radio report, British journalist Chris Brasher said "she's no 14-year-old girl; she's a machine, really."

• Comaneci competed in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, winning two gold medals (beam and floor), and two silvers (individual all-around and team competition).
• She retired from gymnastics in 1984, and defected to the United States in 1989. After her defection she had a rough time with the North American media. Journalists made a big deal about her relationship with a married man, as well as her eating, drinking and spending sprees.

• In 1996, Comaneci married American gymnast (and fellow Olympic gold medallist) Bart Connor. They were married in Romania as 2,000 fans gathered in the streets to watch the proceedings on a giant television screen. The two went on to run a gymnastics academy in Oklahoma.
• In 2004, Comaneci released a book called Letters to a Young Gymnast.

• Comaneci's former coach, Bela Karolyi, defected to the United States in 1981. He went on to coach numerous young American gymnasts to Olympic fame, including Mary Lou Retton, a gold medallist at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

• In 2004, Canadian IOC member Dick Pound released a book called Inside the Olympics. It claimed Comaneci's perfect scores were the result of the Soviet judges' scheme to inflate all scores to ensure a Russian win in the team competition. Pound said Comaneci was clearly superior to the others and deserved to win, but her perfect 10s only came about because the other scores had been so high to begin with.

A perfect 10!

Medium: Radio

Program: Olympic Magazine

Broadcast Date: July 19, 1976

Host: Peter Gzowski

Duration: 7:10

Last updated:
May 31, 2004