Nadia Comăneci: The Gymnast and the Dictator

One summer day in 1976,

a young girl of 14 made history.

In front of millions of viewers,

Nadia Comaneci achieved the impossible

at the Montreal Olympics.

An icon was born.

But Nadia lived in Romania,

one of the most brutal dictatorships

of the east block during a cold war

between the United States and the USSR.

At that time, Romania was ruled with an iron fist

by Nicolae Ceaușescu, at a time when sporting events

were used for political propaganda.

This is the story of Nadia Comaneci,

the little gymnast who became a legend.

Years later, she chose to tell her story

with her own words and her own secrets.

Comaneci, Nadia?

Present.

Do you know what they say about stories?

That there are always three versions:

yours, mine, and the truth.

This is mine.

I was born in Romania on November 12, 1961,

three months after the construction of the Berlin Wall.

I was named Nadia Elena Comaneci by my father,

Gheorghe, and my mother, Stefania.

We lived in Onesti, a small city cradled in the foothills

of the Carpathian Mountains of Romania.

If you want to know me, you have to know the Romanian people

because my soul was created

by their experience, by their history.

I am who my people are.

I'm the product of their wars,

revolutions, their suffering, and their subjugation.

I was one year old when she was born,

but I can tell you that

it was the transition between a very dark decade

when the Russian army was occupying Romania,

and Romania was destroyed as a country,

where all the Intelligentsia, the political people

were tortured and killed in the communist gulag.

The big opening didn't happen

until Ceausescu came into power.

- My memory of the history of my country

begins in 1967 when I was six years old,

and Nicolae Ceausescu was named

the first secretary of the remaining communist party.

- When the Russians invaded Prague in 1968,

He was the only head of a communist country

that protested against the Russians invading Prague.

- For my family and for many Romanians,

Nicolae Ceausescu symbolized a new era of hope

and openness to the world.

That made the western country think

that he is this

open-minded leader

they could use as a bridge between west and east.

- Nicolae Ceausescu was a man devoted to the people.

He opened Romania to the outside world.

We had good industries, agriculture, and construction.

Our country developed.

In this landscape of open attitude,

new and interesting books began to appear.

Writers, painters, and in the same way

sports began to flourish.

And the Nadia Comaneci syndrome was part of this landscape.

One day, a big Hungarian man

with a droopy mustache showed up at my classroom

and asked, "Who can do a cartwheel?"

This question literally changed my life.

Then two little girls lifted up,

"We can do a cartwheel."

"I'd like to see it."

Boom, there it is out of them.

Two blonde headed little kids.

That was Nadia and her little teammate, Viorica Dumitru,

and golly, I said,

"Do you guys gonna be in this afternoon?

"You come to the gym."

And we had the opportunity at that time

to go and to join a brand new

school of gymnastic in Onesti.

We took it.

Of course it was a team, half of them by Marta and me,

we divided the responsibilities.

Marta took the artistic preparation

and particularly the beam performance,

the same on the floor exercise.

My responsibility was obviously the vault and the bars,

also the general physical conditioning

was my responsibility.

I was quiet, never smiled,

and I rarely stood out from the other gymnasts.

When I stepped into the gym,

I knew I wanted to fit into that world.

I was overwhelmed by its size.

Each mat, vault, bar, and beam

held endless possibilities for play.

When I met Nadia, she was down-to-earth,

one of us, and she's very honest and modest,

very modest girl.

Gymnastics was lots of fun.

Bela was a great spotter.

I always knew he wouldn't let me

hit the ground or an apparatus.

I loved working with him.

I had no fear.

- She worked hard through everything, she did.

It wasn't easy.

My body was hurting so much from

training so much, so hard all the time,

not giving time to recover.

I said, "Girls, 10 push-ups."

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Don't know how many she did.

20.

I said that's Nadia, that's the fighter,

that's the one who gonna be a big star.

I always wanted to more

than Bela or Marta asked of me.

I liked the feeling of improving.

It took months to learn the simplest skills.

I would return to the gym and start all over again

until I mastered each skill.

I craved perfection.

Things really opened culturally.

Romania exploded with talent.

Our theater companies were going

to international festivals in the western countries.

And then in 1971, He went to China.

And that was the end.

Mao showed him human landscape that Ceausescu liked,

and he came back to Romania and closed everything up.

The Romanian government

used to pour money into its athletic programs

because our leaders believed that athletes

represented the power of the government

and validated our way of life.

It was a huge honor to make it

on to an elite athletic team.

Our schedule went six days a week,

four hours each day taking classes

and four in the gym.

Each meal included specific portions

of meat, vegetables, and milk

so that our bodies and bones would grow stronger.

Bela and Marta believed in discipline

and were terribly demanding.

They had trained us to be professional

regardless of the level of competition.

My first big gymnastics competition

was the 1970 National Championships.

I was nine.

I came in 13th at the competition.

I was frustrated, furious, humiliated,

and determined never to have those kinds

of mistakes plague me again.

- The soviets at that time had been dominating the sport,

absolutely dominating.

Beautiful athletes, very well-prepared.

Based on a strong system of performance

and enhancing the performance

by a very much centralized program.

- It looked like we were one communist block,

but boy, the rivalry.

- So they had been considered unbeatable, unbeatable.

Well, we didn't care about unbeatable status

or the soviets, we cared about our little bitty girls,

the ones who were getting closer and closer

to a potential of high performance.

To me, competing meant

overcoming frustration and anger.

I wanted to push myself and to better than anybody else.

My first success came at the 1972 Friendship Cup.

I won the all-around gold.

Our team's gymnasts were only 10 years old.

All the gymnasts from the other countries

were in their late teens and early 20s.

We performed skills never before seen in gymnasts so young.

People were saying Bela is coming

with this kindergarten of gymnasts.

This is ridiculous.

What they gonna do on the big scene?

When I arrived in Montreal,

I was flabbergasted.

The Olympic village blew my mind.

Its size and above all else,

athletes in more sports than I had ever heard of.

What I remember most was that everything,

everything was free.

I saw for the first time in my life

pizza, cottage cheese, peanut butter.

To me, it was so high-tech, so strange

and exciting and absolutely wonderful.

Everybody was excited.

This was an Olympic game going on.