Nadia Comaneci - Olympic Gold Medalist: Gymnastics

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Charity: Nadia's charity is the Special Olympics. PERSONAL CONNECTION: Nadia has been on the board of directors of the Special Olympics for several years, and brought the Special Olympics to Romania for the first time.


Nadia Comaneci burst into the limelight as the star of the 1976 Montreal Olympics and is the most celebrated gymnast of our time. The diminutive Romanian eventually produced a lifetime Olympic medal haul of five Golds, three Silvers and one Bronze and she has left behind a competitive record which will be virtually impossible to match.
First noticed by Romanian gymnastics coach, Bela Karolyi, when she was a mere six-year-old, Comaneci was soon a member of the Romanian junior gymnastics team. She won the national junior championship in 1970 as a nine-year-old and continued collecting several junior titles until she began senior competition in 1975. That same year, she entered the European Championships for the first time and went on to win the overall title, as well as three of the individual events.
In 1976, she made her first trip to the United States where she won several pre-Olympic titles, but nobody was ready for the unbelievable standards soon to be set by the 14-year-old gymnast at the Olympic Games, least of all the scoreboard operators at the Montreal Forum. When Comaneci dismounted from the uneven bars in the compulsory round, the scoreboard lacked the space for the proper number of digits to display her perfect 10.00 score and could only flash 1.00. She had literally accomplished the impossible!
By the time the Games were over, she had won three Gold Medals and a Bronze in the individual competition, a silver team medal and had famously become the first gymnast ever to receive a perfect 10.00 score from the judges. As a result, she appeared on the magazine covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated all in the same week.
Four years later, Comaneci narrowly failed to defend her Olympic all-around crown at the Moscow Games when Elena Davidova of the Soviet Union outscored her for the gold medal by less than 0.1 of a point. Many felt the Romanian had been the victim of a hometown scoring decision and the judges debated for 28 minutes before awarding the marks. Nevertheless, Comaneci still won individual golds on the beam and floor that year, boosting her lifetime Olympic haul to five gold, three silver and one bronze.
She retired from competition in 1984 and, in 1989, she left Romania and settled in the United States. She married former U.S. gymnastics star Bart Conner in April 1996. She still remains involved with the sport through television commentary and the column that she writes for International Gymnast magazine. She was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1996. She was selected at the Female Athlete of the Century in 2000 by the World Sports Foundation. Additionally, she was chosen as one of the "100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century" by Good Housekeeping magazine.
In addition to her work with the Laureus World Sports Academy, she is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Special Olympics International and is Vice President of the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

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[Krom]

At least Trump's inevitable Olympic gushing will have a point with Nadia Comaneci.

That said, there's no reason to believe ahead of time she'll be any good at this game. Trump's gushing will only have a point if its about her gymnastics accomplishments.

[bbnbama]

Fabulous gymnast...terrible picture of her!

[Tigerusty]

If you know the risks she took to escape Romania to come to the US you will also know that she is one tough cookie, so she might hold up well. Bart Conner was instramental in getting her out.

[Yory Boy]

She's no longer a perfect 10.

[Krom]

Originally Posted by Tigerusty

If you know the risks she took to escape Romania to come to the US you will also know that she is one tough cookie, so she might hold up well. Bart Conner was instramental in getting her out.

Oh, I know she's tough.

But Trump tends to confuse one kind of ability with others. Being tough is a nice and important thing you need to succeed in business. But its far from the only thing you need. You need to be organized. You need to communicate well. You need to be able to inspire people on a personal level, one to one and interactively, not just on the more generic level that someone who's a hero to others does. You need an ego, so you have confidence, but limits on that ego so you don't blind yourself. Plus a whole bunch of other qualities that an athlete may indeed have, but they also might not.

She may do very well. But unlike Trump, I won't assume an Olympian necessarily will. Even the toughest one. Even one who also put up with a lot of other adversity and risk.

But if he HAD to pick an Olympian and will gush, as I said earlier, at least he truly picked one who truly earned the right to be gushed over. At least in her given field.

[psycobabe007]

Absolutely horrid picture of her. She really is soo much more beautiful than that! Shame on Trump (well like he really cares anywho) for letting that be her picture for the series!
Her, Bart, and their son Dylan are just soo adorable together !!!

I do think that she will have a tough spirit about her! It is going to be tough to get past all the crap that will spew out of Trump's trap about her Olympic career and such....

[soccermama]

Originally Posted by psycobabe007

Absolutely horrid picture of her. She really is soo much more beautiful than that! Shame on Trump (well like he really cares anywho) for letting that be her picture for the series!
Her, Bart, and their son Dylan are just soo adorable together !!!

I do think that she will have a tough spirit about her! It is going to be tough to get past all the crap that will spew out of Trump's trap about her Olympic career and such....

I was just going to point out that her bio did not mention her being a mother so thanks for pointing that out! That is such an important aspect of somebody's life to leave out. She is one of the only contestants that I really *know* anything about, so it will be interesting to see how far she goes.

[Charlie123]

I have no idea who she is.

[Krom]

Originally Posted by Charlie123

I have no idea who she is.

Very briefly, in the mid-70s, she was practically the most famous girl on the planet. But she's lived a relatively low-key life since then, at least comparatively.