Letters to a Young Gymnast

by Nadia Comaneci

  And with that he took his coat off and unloaded the cart, took a bit of wood the right length and in the twinkling of an eye the axle was ready and in place. He loaded the cart up again, yoked the oxen and by the time that day was giving place to night he was home.

  His father came up to the cart and saw that it had a new axle. He asked the lad who had fixed it. The boy told him everything from beginning to end, and the father laughed and said, “Remember, my lad, that necessity is the best teacher.”

  Necessity is what you do in life when there is only one path, choice, or desire. Necessity is synonymous with need, requirement, inevitability, stipulation, and obligation. But at the 1976 Olympics, necessity for me meant only listening to Bela and Marta Karolyi.

  The Romanian government used to pour money into its Olympic programs because our leaders believed that athletes represented the power of the government and validated our way of life. As a result, the infighting for individual athletes’ rights to comprise their respective Olympic teams was fierce. Gymnastics was no exception, and because successful athletes generated privileges for each gymnast, their families, and especially the coaches, the pressure was unbelievable. Although our Onesti school’s gymnasts had proven their worth, taking the top six places at the Romanian National Championships, Bela recalls that the federation still chose four gymnasts from Club Dinamo and only three from our school to be on the Olympic team.

  “We have the right to compete as a team!” Bela told the government officials. “Nadia Comaneci is the European champion; the rest of the team has beaten every other gymnast in our country,” he declared. “We won the Nationals!” In the end, it was decided that there would be a final competition in Bucharest—Onesti versus Dinamo. Bela moved our team to Bucharest. The summer was incredibly hot, but we practiced day in, day out, regardless of the heat. Club Dinamo’s coaches took the weather into account and on particularly hot days allowed their gymnasts to go to the beach. I remember how jealous I was that Dinamo’s gymnasts were given vacation days. I could taste that jealousy like the salty sweat that covered my skin and never dried.

  One particularly sweltering afternoon, the general in charge of sports in Romania surprised us at the gym with a visit. As we dragged ourselves through our full routines, Bela and the man chatted, until the general asked where Dinamo’s girls were. Bela replied, “At the beach.” The general was furious that Dinamo’s gymnasts weren’t practicing and called for a meeting of both teams the following morning. When Dinamo’s head coach couldn’t make him understand that his gymnasts had needed some time to cool off, the general made Bela the head coach for the Nationals and the Olympic team. He now had the power to choose all the gymnasts. After watching both teams practice for another week, Bela made his decision. He took six gymnasts from our school and two alternates from Dinamo to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada. It was actually a fair decision on his part—our gymnasts were leaps above Dinamo’s.

  Friend, I need to put things into perspective for you because you are under the illusion that the Romanian team, myself included, thought that the Olympics were the biggest event in our lives. That was not the case. Until 1976, I believed that the European Championships were the most important gymnastics competition in the world. Everything I knew came from what I was told by my coach and my government. I’d never watched the Olympics on television, let alone televised gymnastics competitions from around the world.

  So when I arrived in Montreal for the 1976 Games, I was flabbergasted. The Olympic Village blew my mind—its size and the number of security officials, coaches, and, above all else, athletes in more sports than I’d ever heard of. What I remember most was that every thing—everything—was free. You were given a badge, and with it, you could see movies in the village’s theater; you could get a soft drink; and you were given matching clothing, bags, hats, and pins. To me, it was so high-tech, so strange and exciting and absolutely wonderful. That first day, I was afraid to close my eyes because I didn’t want to miss anything. Little did I know then that missing everything was part of the Karolyis plan to protect their gymnasts.

  The men’s and women’s residences were separate, so Bela couldn’t monitor us at night, but Marta was more than effective. We were not allowed to go anywhere alone. Everything was scheduled for us—breakfast at 7:00 A.M., training, rest time, lunch, and so on. We had a doctor traveling with the team, and he made sure we didn’t try any food other than what we knew—meat, salad, nothing fancy. I saw, for the first time in my life, pizza, cottage cheese, peanut butter, and breakfast cereal. The smells of the cafeteria were overwhelming.

  The Olympic Village, after my initial awe, became like anywhere else the team had traveled. We were just in another venue to have another competition. We did not march in the opening ceremony because Bela didn’t feel comfortable having us stand on our feet for six hours with competition beginning the next day. I must admit that I agreed with his decision about the ceremony and virtually everything else during the Games. I didn’t want anything—not food or late nights or catching a cold—to interfere with my ability to perform. Later, as I grew older and more independent, I would clash with the Karolyis’ total control over my life, but I will never argue that in the early days, their style worked for me and helped me become a great gymnast.

  You ask what my dreams were, going into the Olympics. When the media asked me the same question, I said the obvious, “I hope I’m going to win a medal.” It was a reasonable dream in my mind, not an unbelievably audacious statement. I wanted to compete and do my job well, and I would have been happy with whatever color medal I received. I was not at the Olympics to be in a frenzy of grabbing gold medals. Everybody thinks of gold only, but if you win a bronze by moving from sixth place to third, that’s success. I have always appreciated every medal I have won in that way. If I do my job and receive silver, then that’s what I deserved. If I want more than that, then I should be better.

  Of course, Bela and Marta’s dreams were different from mine going into the Games. As adults, seeing their gymnasts with so many abilities, they wanted us to live up to our potential and to reflect their own talent. Show me fifty kids in a gym, and I can pick out the one or two with talent, which means they have incredible flexibility, balance, desire, and something magic that is indefinable and very rare. The Karolyis did that with thousands of kids and winnowed them down to the team from Onesti at the 1976 Games. They had a lot riding on their choices and decisions. The government had been generous and at times supportive of their experimental school. It was time for Bela and Marta to show their worth if they were to garner continued support. That meant we had to perform to our potential.

  For me, I guess, my personal goal for 1976, which I did not share with anyone, was to create my own dream. I had no one to follow—my parents were not athletes, so I wasn’t walking in their footsteps. My dream was to discover myself, to know what I could do, to push myself, and to be better than anybody else. You probably want to know why. But I don’t have a good answer to what created my desires. It’s just the way I am.

  My first goal at the Olympics was to perform my podium workout well (this is the workout held in front of judges before the competition), so that I didn’t bring any training mistakes into the real competition. When I was younger, Bela always used to tell me to pay attention to specific things during each routine, such as hand movements, certain skills, or inflections in the music. By 1976, he had stopped doing this because he finally realized that when he told me to pay attention to one thing, I’d make a mistake on something else. What I needed to pay attention to was vastly different from what he imagined. He was just creating more problems for me. But, to give Bela his due, at the 1976 Olympics he also created an environment in which I could shine. As I’ve tried to explain, the media, fans, and judges must notice athletes in order for those athletes to rate scores that will place them on the podium. Some coaches are just coaches. Other coaches, like Bela, are coaches, publicists, agents, and defenders all
rolled into one. If an athlete is very talented and lucky enough to have a coach such as Bela, she has a better chance of thriving in the world of competitive athletics because she can focus on her sport and leave the politics to her coach.

  What did you mean in your last letter when you said that I “came into my own” in 1976? I did not materialize at age fourteen at the 1976 Games. Gymnasts don’t become great in a single year, just as actors never have “overnight successes” but instead work decades at their craft before their “big break.” I was already a great gymnast by 1976, but no one knew that in the United States or Canada. Bela understood that nobody knew me or the Romanian team. Everyone expected great things from the Soviet and German gymnasts—athletes such as Olga Korbut and Ludmila Tourischeva. We, however, were from a tiny country no one could even find on the map. So Bela devised a scheme to focus the world’s attention on his little girls.

  The podium workout is an opportunity for all gymnasts to perform their routines on the actual apparatus used in the Olympics and in the gym where the competition will be held. Each team is given twenty minutes per apparatus, and most gymnasts perform watered-down routines so that they can avoid last-minute injuries brought on by nerves. The stands are filled with members of the media, fans, and judges. I have already told you that judges who do not recognize gymnasts tend to score them lower than the well-known girls. In 1976, the Romanian team was completely unknown, and Bela knew that had to change if we were to have a chance of winning.

  “Now entering the arena for the 1976 Olympics, the team from Romania.” I heard the loudspeakers blaring our country’s name again and again and a light smattering of polite applause. It was time to enter the gymnasium for our podium workout, but Bela held us in the tunnel that led to the arena, not allowing us to enter. We were all dressed alike and wearing ponytails. Bela instructed us to march into the arena like soldiers and to perform our full routines with no mistakes. The loudspeaker blared our country’s name again. “Mr. Professor, they’re calling us,” I ventured. Bela said to let them wait. When we finally entered the gym, the entire audience was watching the doors because we’d repeatedly failed to walk through them when called. The applause was a bit louder, and I could feel thousands of eyes watching us.

  We were a curiosity, if nothing else. We were really tiny compared to the other gymnasts (most were in their late teens and twenties) and wore matching leotards. Gymnasts from other countries wore mismatched clothing and moved casually from apparatus to apparatus. Not us. Without ever sitting down, we ran through our routines, and we were flawless. By the time I dismounted the beam, the coaches, other gymnasts, and official delegates were in an uproar. The next day, the previously unknown team from Romania had to hide from reporters.

  Friend, you wrote that I was an “automaton in ’76, a tiny robot doing what everyone else wished.” You are wrong. It is true that children do not choose their own paths at age six. What do they know? Parents clothe and feed them and decide when it is time for naps and bed. Parents pick their music, exercise, and outings. I was placed in a gym to play—that’s all it was in my mind—and if I hadn’t wanted to, I could have gone home. You cannot force a child to do anything as complex as gymnastics and to improve at the task unless that child wants to. I was given the chance to run, climb, jump, and soar, and I loved it from the moment I entered the gym. By age fourteen, when I reached the 1976 Games, I had already chosen my path; I was doing exactly as I wished.

  The Karolyis and my government gave me an opportunity that my family never could have afforded. In other countries, you have to pay for your coach; for your private-school tuition; and for all of the leotards, wrist guards, shoes, and medical attention necessary for success. Things were different in Romania. My parents and my brother never suffered as a result of my desires. They could enjoy my successes while pursuing their own lives. In Romania, it was a big deal, a huge honor, to make it onto an elite athletic team. You were allowed to travel, and none of us could have afforded that. As a thirteen-or fourteen-year-old, you got to see other countries and buy stupid things that seemed really important at the time, such as dolls and ribbons and socks. Although I didn’t understand the importance of the Olympics in 1976, I was a willing participant. I had the choice to participate, and I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and held on as tightly as humanly possible.

  When the Romanian team entered the arena in Montreal for the Olympic compulsory competition, with our hair in ponytails and wearing snow-white leotards with striped piping, we were no longer the unknown team from a tiny country who-knows-where. There was a buzz, created by an unparalleled public relations move by Bela. Though many of the judges came from the USSR and favored the Soviets, our team dominated the compulsories; when I stepped up to the bars, we were in second place, only one-hundredth of a point behind the Russians.

  No one knows when he or she is about to make history. There is no warning and no instruction manual on how to handle the moment. I can only tell you that it was business as usual as I swung onto the uneven bars. I executed each skill with the extension and movements expected of me, and I dismounted. I’d done the same compulsory routine as everyone else, but with a “Nadia touch.” I felt an almost invisible hop on the landing but knew that my routine was good enough. It wasn’t perfect, though.

  Since I was the last to perform on the bars, I immediately went over to warm up for the beam. I never analyzed my performance beyond a quick thought of the landing. It was done, and I needed to move on. I knew that after the day was over, the Karolyis and I would talk about what I had done right and wrong. That’s how we always processed competitions. While I warmed up for the beam, my score for the bars flashed across the scoreboard—a 1.00. I continued to warm up, unaware of what was happening, focused on my next routine. The crowd was silent, confused. No one knew what 1.00 meant.

  Bela gestured to the judges to ask what my score meant, ready for a fight. A Swedish judge held up ten fingers. The reason my score had shown as 1.00 was that the scoreboard didn’t have the programmed ability to flash a 10 because the organizers had never had the need for one before. Bela came over to me, and I asked, “Mr. Professor, was that really a 10?” He grinned from ear to ear and said yes. I’ve told you, friend, it is rare for me to show emotion on the outside, but I did smile then, and when one of my teammates told me to go up and wave to the crowd, I did that, too.

  Promptly, I forgot about the 10 and moved on to the beam. During the rest of the competition, I got six more perfect scores of 10, for a total of seven at the Montreal Games. It didn’t have an impact on me—not one bit. I thought that maybe the judges were being too good to me. The team was happy about my scores, but none of us focused on them. We needed to pay attention to the rest of the competition. I have always been able to concentrate. When I’m on the beam, I don’t hear the music from the floor. And when I’m vaulting, I can’t hear the applause when other gymnasts do their dismounts.

  I do remember thinking at the time that I was glad to get a perfect 10 on the bars first because when I began gymnastics, bars were my original favorite. I loved the precision, the angles, and the complexity. Bars require a lot of thinking and figuring things out by using specific lines and points for reference. The Comaneci Salto and Comaneci Dismount that I performed during the 1976 Games came from countless hours of practice and thousands of falls. The idea that Bela and I had created new skills never seen before was exciting. But other than those random thoughts, receiving the first 10 for my uneven bar routine did not affect me. My fellow gymnasts were still my friends—my sisters. There was little personal jealousy because everything we did was designed to help the team, which benefited everyone. Bela was responsible for the strategy, and we were responsible for the consistency of our performances.

  In the end, I won the all-around gold medal as well as an individual gold on bars and beam and a bronze on floor . . . and made history. Does this sound anticlimactic? Well, in a way, that’s how it felt. There were a few mome
nts of disbelief coupled with winning medals, which felt great, but as I’ve said, doing well was expected of me. It was my job. I accomplished my goals, everyone’s goals, but winning a competition wasn’t an enormous surprise. Very simply, that is what I was supposed to do. My moments of success felt incredible, but they were topped off by exhaustion and the desire to return home to my family and life.

  There were no appearances on David Letterman or Oprah Winfrey. I didn’t do a photo shoot for the cover of a magazine. Sports agents at IMG and CAA never beat down my door; they didn’t even knock. I came, performed, made my country proud, and left the arena via a bus, not a limousine. I felt a sense of accomplishment, but there was practice, training, and more competitions ahead. The Olympics were over, and I was naive enough to believe I would never look back.

  Nothing, my friend, is ever what it seems.

  ■ The Disciplined Life

  My favorite vault as a competitive gymnast was the “Tsukahara.” In this vault, a gymnast runs forward, springs off the springboard, and dives onto the horse with a one-half turn onto her hands, then performs a piked one-and-one-half somersault off the horse and lands facing it. The Tsukahara was the first multiple-flipping vault for women. Before that, gymnasts performed a variation of a handspring over the vault. The Tsukahara was much more difficult and dangerous than any other vault, and that ’s why I liked it. I always wanted to do the hardest skills possible. I was one of a handful of gymnasts who did a Tsukahara, and some experts thought I performed it better than anyone, including the guy who invented it.

  During the 1976 Olympics, I did not realize how much media attention was focused on the Romanian team or me. We didn’t watch television or speak to other athletes, so there was no way to know. Plus, the media were not allowed into the Olympic Village, so we had no contact with reporters and journalists. But Bela and Marta knew, and they asked the Romanian government to allow us to go home immediately after the Games. They found the attention overwhelming and frightening and wanted to make certain the team was safe. There was no immediate flight, so we were taken to a youth camp in Canada, which was a treat. I was still under the impression that I’d done very well at the Olympics but not that I had become a national figure or a heroine back in my country.