Olympic milestones: Nadia’s perfect ten

The only thing Nadia Comaneci and I have in common is that we were both 14 in 1976. In her case, she was at the Montreal Olympics scoring the first-ever perfect 10 in gymnastics. I was at home, climbing into a rowing boat for the first time with a bunch of my schoolmates. My first Olympics was eight years away. Nadia’s career would be over by then.

This picture is amazing, proof of how flexible and controlled the body can be through endless, rigorous training.

I suffered, like most rowers, the miserable, cold grind of it all on winter mornings. But at least I was there because I wanted to be. In Nadia’s case, being such a young girl from a totalitarian country that brooked no rebellion, the toll was far greater. She seldom smiled, they say she never cried, and at 15 she allegedly tried to commit suicide by drinking bleach, though she subsequently claimed it was shampoo and a “cry for help”.

She was the youngest Romanian to be awarded The Gold Medal of the Hero of Socialist Labour by then-president and communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Her whole career appears to have involved the repression of her freedom.

She actually attended the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics but only as a spectator, under the scrutiny of her guardians. I certainly didn’t come across her there, competing at my first Olympics. To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

In my view, gymnastics is a different type of sport. It doesn’t come under the heading of Citius, Altrius, Fortius (faster, higher, stronger). I have a problem with any sport that’s judged. I don’t see how human judgment, with all the politics and prejudice involved, can produce universally acknowledged champions. I accept that Comaneci was a brilliant performer. You can see that with the naked eye. But there are too many fine lines and suspected instances of bias to be sure of the results in general.