Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner (née Comăneci; born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian retired gymnast. She is a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976, at age 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games. At the same Games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal), she earned six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Comăneci won two more gold medals and achieved two more perfect 10s. During her career, Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals.
One of the world's best-known gymnasts, Comăneci was praised for her artistry and grace, which brought unprecedented global popularity to the sport in the mid-1970s. Called "the most iconic gymnast of the 20th century" by El País, Comăneci was named one of the Athletes of the 20th century by the Laureus World Sports Academy. In 2024, the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) voted her as the best female gymnast of the past 100 years and the second best female athlete of all sports.
Comăneci has lived in the United States since 1989, when she defected from then-Communist Romania, before its revolution in December that year. Comăneci later worked with and married American Olympic gold-medal gymnast Bart Conner, their wedding held in Bucharest after the fall of the Communist regime and televised live in Romania.
Nadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onești, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacău County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia. She was born to Gheorghe (1936–2012) and Ștefania Comăneci, and has a younger brother named Adrian. Her parents separated in the 1970s and her father later moved to Bucharest, the capital. Nadia and Adrian were raised in the Romanian Orthodox Church. In a 2011 interview, her mother said that she enrolled Comăneci into gymnastics classes because she was so full of energy and active as a child that she was difficult to manage. After years of top-level athletic competition, Comăneci graduated from Politehnica University of Bucharest with a degree in sports education, which qualified her to coach gymnastics.
Nadia began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called Flacără ("The Flame"), with coaches Duncan and Munteanu. At age six, she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school, after Károlyi spotted her and a friend turning cartwheels in a schoolyard. Károlyi was looking for gymnasts that he could train from a young age. When recess ended, the girls quickly went inside and Károlyi went around the classrooms trying to find them; he eventually spotted Comăneci. The other girl, Viorica Dumitru, developed in a different direction and became one of Romania's top ballerinas.
By 1968, when she was seven, Comăneci started training with Károlyi. She was one of the first students at the gymnastics school established in Onești by Károlyi and his wife, Márta. As a resident of the town, Comăneci was able to live at home for many years; most of the other students boarded at the school.
In 1970, Comăneci began competing as a member of her home town team, and at age nine, became the youngest gymnast ever to win the Romanian Nationals. The following year, she participated in her first international competition, a dual junior meet between Romania and Yugoslavia, winning her first all-around title and contributing to the team gold. For the next few years, Comăneci competed as a junior in numerous national contests in Romania and dual meets with countries such as Hungary, Italy, and Poland. At age 11 in 1973, she won the all-around gold, as well as the vault and uneven bars titles, at the Junior Friendship Tournament (Druzhba), an important international meet for junior gymnasts.
Comăneci's first major international success came at age 13, when she nearly swept the board at the 1975 European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Skien, Norway. Comăneci won the all-around and gold medals in every event but the floor exercise, finishing in second place. She continued to enjoy success that year, winning the all-around at the 'Champions All' competition and coming first in the all-around, vault, beam, and bars at the Romanian National Championships. In the pre-Olympic test event in Montreal, Comăneci won the all-around and the balance beam golds as well as silvers in the vault, floor and bars. Accomplished Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim won the golds in those events and was one of Comăneci's greatest rivals for the next five years.
In March 1976, Comăneci competed in the inaugural edition of the American Cup at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. She received rare scores of 10, which signified a perfect routine without any deductions, for her vault in the preliminary stage and for her floor exercise routine in the final of the all-around competition, which she won. During this competition, Comăneci met American gymnast Bart Conner for the first time. While he remembered this meeting, Comăneci noted in her memoirs that she had to be reminded of it later in life. She was 14 and Conner was celebrating his 18th birthday. They both won a silver cup and were photographed together. A few months later, they participated in the 1976 Summer Olympics that Comăneci dominated, while Conner was a marginal figure. Conner later said, "Nobody knew me, and [Comăneci] certainly didn't pay attention to me."
On July 18, 1976, Comăneci made history at the Montreal Olympics. During the team compulsory portion of the competition, she was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars. Omega SA, the official Olympics scoreboard manufacturer, had been led to believe that competitors could not receive a perfect 10, and had not programmed the scoreboard to display this score. Comăneci's perfect 10 thus appeared as "1.00", the only means by which the judges could indicate that she had received a 10.
During the remainder of the Montreal Games, Comăneci earned six additional "10s". She won gold medals for the individual all-around, the balance beam and uneven bars. Comăneci also won a bronze for the floor exercise and a silver as part of the team all-around. Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim was her main rival during the Montreal Olympics; Kim became the second gymnast to receive a perfect 10, in her case for her performance on the vault. Comăneci took over the media spotlight from gymnast Olga Korbut, who had been the darling of the 1972 Munich Games.
Comăneci was the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title. She also holds the record as the youngest ever Olympic gymnastics all-around champion at age 14. The sport has since raised its age-eligibility requirements so that gymnasts must be at least 16 in the same calendar year of the Olympics in order to compete. When Comăneci competed in 1976, gymnasts had only to be 14 by the first day of the competition. Unless the age of eligibility is lowered, her record cannot be broken.
Comăneci was ranked as the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year for 1976 and the Associated Press' 1976 "Female Athlete of the Year". Back home in Romania, she was awarded the Sickle and Hammer Gold Medal for her success, and Comăneci was named a Hero of Socialist Labor. She was the youngest Romanian to receive such recognition during the administration of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
"Nadia's Theme" refers to an instrumental piece that became linked to Comăneci shortly after the 1976 Olympics. It was part of the musical score of the 1971 film Bless the Beasts and Children and originally titled "Cotton's Dream". It was also used as the title theme music for the American soap opera The Young and the Restless.
Robert Riger used it in association with slow-motion montages of Comăneci on the television program ABC's Wide World of Sports. The song became a top-10 single in the fall of 1976, and composers Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin Jr. renamed it as "Nadia's Theme" in Comăneci's honor. Comăneci never performed to "Nadia's Theme", however. Her floor exercise music was a medley of the songs "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" and "Jump in the Line", arranged for piano.