How old is not yet comaneci

The ponytail is long gone, the childhood cravings have been replaced by more sophisticated tastes, but no matter where she goes Comaneci cannot escape the memories of what happened on July 18 in Montreal.

The day she became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympic Games. There was 10, then 20, then 30 and now 40, it seems like a lot of numbers. Everyone I meet this year wants to talk about it. Then it will be on to Rio for the Aug. Tonya Harding is an American figure skater who ruined her future in the sport when she was implicated in the attack on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan at the Winter Olympic trials. His long jump world record stood for 25 years.

Olympic gold medalist Florence Joyner brought style to track and field with form-fitting bodysuits, six-inch fingernails and amazing speed.

She still holds the world records in the and meter events. Swimmer Michael Phelps has set the record for winning the most medals, 28, of any Olympic athlete in history. In , Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics. American swimmer Gertrude Ederle achieved fame when she competed in the Olympics and became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in Nadia Comaneci is a Romanian gymnast who became the first woman to score a perfect 10 in an Olympic gymnastics event in , at age Olivia Rodrigo —.

Megan Thee Stallion —. Bowen Yang —. Because no gymnast had ever scored a 10, the scoreboard wasn't configured to display it properly.

Instead, it showed a 1. Coach Bela Karolyi gestured angrily to the judges to ask what the score meant. One of them held up 10 fingers. By the end of the Olympics, Comaneci had earned seven perfect 10s, three gold medals, one bronze and one silver.

In a single week, she was on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated. But life in Romania after her triumphant return grew increasingly grim under Nicolae Ceausescu, the country's brutal dictator. In , after Karolyi defected while leading a tour of Romanian gymnasts, including Comaneci, in the United States, she was no longer permitted to travel outside Romania.

She began to chafe under the many restrictions placed on her. She defected with a small group one night in , walking hours in the dark into neighboring Hungary. The next day the group was driven to the Austrian border.

That night they climbed seven barbed-wire fences. Comaneci said in her autobiography she was "covered with blood. Suffice it to say that I was shell-shocked. Her first memory of meeting Conner was when they were on a bus together during the tour. After her defection, they were reunited on a talk show, and he reminded her that their first meeting had actually been at a meet in Madison Square Garden.

At the suggestion of a photographer, he had given her a kiss on the cheek, and the photo ran in the New York Times. He showed her the picture to refresh her memory. Comaneci remembers saying: "It was a little blond guy, but not necessarily him. But the entire American team was a bunch of little blond guys. Their wedding was a lavish, two-day affair in Bucharest with 1, guests, televised live.

Their son, Dylan, was born 10 years later. Not surprisingly, he loves the gym, said Comaneci, who frequently admonishes her son to be careful.