Nadia Comaneci's Perfect 10: A Gymnastics Milestone

On July eighteenth, nineteen seventy six, fourteen year old Romanian gymnast Nadiya Komich became the first Olympian ever to score a perfect ten in gymnastics. And she didn't only do it once, she did it seven more times in two different events. No one thought a perfect ten would be possible, that the scoreboard didn't even allow for that score to be posted, as it said one point zhoh instead of ten. Here's the story behind all of this today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. And today's trivia question to listen out for was what gymnasts also scored a perfect ten at the nineteen seventy six Olympic Games. So before we dive into this moment, how is it that their scoring is done? Because in gymnastics it's a little different than in sports like baseball and basketball, where you score a run that's a run, you score a goal that's a goal, But in gymnastics you have multiple judges that give you a score and then that scores added up to give you your total. Now, for years and years in the Olympics. Ever since they included gymnastics in nineteen twenty eight, no one expected anyone to score a ten, which is the maximum score you can have. Every judge that judged the gymnastics events would give a score similar to the if you don't watch gymnastics, similar to the dunk contest in the NBA, you give a score best out ten and that's how judges would judge it. So back then they would have each judge would score it, and you would take the average of those judges and that would be your score for this event. And in nineteen seventy six, at that time, no one thought you could score above a ten. So before scoreboard that's made, they do we need to include a possible ten, because technically that would be a possible score, But when they asked the gymnastics committee, they said, don't worry about that because no one will ever get that. So they just put a single number with a decimal, as that was how it was always done. Most people didn't think you could score above a nine point nine. Now, this was the scoring back in the day. Now ever, since two thousand and four they changed the scoring in gymnastics, and there's an a score in a B scorer, which bases off your difficulty and artistic impression of it, and so you combine those two to get a score and usually now is above a ten. But we're not gonna worry about that. We're gonna focus on how it was in nineteen seventy six when this iconic moment happened. But this wasn't the first ten overall in major competition, as Vera Kazzavaka actually landed a perfect ten in the nineteen sixty seven European Championship during her floor routine. So we come to the nineteen seventy six Games and Nadia is representing Romania. And she grew up and got into gymnastics really early in life, as she began at the age of six, and she was actually recruited as she was spotted doing great car wheels at her schoolyard, and her coaches that she had actually took her all the way to the Olympics and stayed with her. And by the age of eleven, she was already one of the best gymnasts in her whole entire country, and she continued to grow in her skills as her body continued to grow. Now women's gymnastics at this time was really big in the previous Soviet Union countries as they were very strong in the Olympic community. And during her first routine on the uneven bars, she got a perfect tin. And her first routine was actually a routine that everyone did. Everyone had to do the same type of routine and you basically were judged off of everyone else, and she was able to get a perfect tin on that on the uneven bars, and after she landed coming off that final uneven bar, she actually didn't look at the score because she herself would base how she did on how she felt. But she heard a gasp in the audience and that's when everyone looked, and she had one point oh on the scoreboard, and everyone was a little bit confused, and it had to be announced that was a perfect tin because the makers of the scoreboard didn't allow for the perfect tin. And this wouldn't be her only perfect tin, as she would go on to have a perfect tin on the balance beam as well. And her biggest rival at the time was a Soviet gymnast named Nellie Kim, who also received a perfect ten for her vault performance and would beat Nadia on the vault and the floor routine that same Olympic, but no one ever mentions Kim even though she received a perfect tin. She did it after Nadia as they both had a great Olympics as they both took home three gold medals from the Montreal Games as Nadia won the all around, the uneven bars where she had four perfect tens, and the balance beam where she had three perfect tens, so a total of gold medals, and her rival Nellie Kim also won three gold medals as she won it for the vault where she got a perfect ten, the floor routine and her team won the gold medal in that gymnastics yere. Now this rocketed Nadia into instant fame in not only the gymnastics community but all around the world, as it was something no one had ever thought that someone could do, let alone a fourteen year old girl, and this broke down walls as the first man to land a perfect ten in the competition was Soviet gymnast Alexander Dianton, who received a perfect score on the vault and took a record breaking eight medals home from the nineteen eighty Olympics in Moscow, although he was competing against less competition as sixty six countries boycotted that that Olympic event, and multiple others have gone on to get perfect tens ever since that nineteen seventy six Games, as someone got a perfect ten and the nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty four, nineteen eighty eight. In the nineteen ninety two Games, the perfect ten was all achieved. And that's a little bit of the reason why gymnastics kind of went away from this perfect ten, because if you can get the highest, is that really mean you got the best, because maybe you could get better. As for Naudia, she did go on to compete at the nineteen eighty Moscow Olympics, where she won gold in the balance beam and the floor routine, and took home silver in the team and all around. In total, she ended up with nine Olympic medals and retired from the sport at the age of twenty two. That same year she's got her perfect ten. She also met the love of her life, her husband, Bart Connor, who was an American gymnast, and to this day they still train gymnasts who compete around the world. And even though the scoring system has changed, all those who that got that perfect ten We'll always be remembered as doing something perfect, which is something you don't get a lot in sports. Was that perfect? Sometimes we don't know we have the perfect score in gymnask's, we have the perfect game in baseball. But sometimes the word perfect just gives you that extra oomph and that extra meaning behind what you achieved. And that's exactly what the perfect ten did at the moment in nineteen seventy six when the walls were broken down and the perfect ten was now achievable. And thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you like this story, please follow us on our socials. We're on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, we're on all of those. We like to post small videos on there of all our episodes so you can connect faces with our topics. Can come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History. And did you catch the answer to today's trivia question? What gymnasts also scored a perfect ten at the nineteen seventy six Olympic Games. Soviet Union's Nelly him Ba