Word: comaneci
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...seem to mark social acceptability among guys. Spitz, though, is a spokesman for Allergan, the company that makes Botox and has started to market directly to men via its website. Sure, Spitz first considered getting the world's most common cosmetic procedure after a friend, former Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci, told him that the wrinkles between his eyes made him look old and overly serious, but he got a whole lot more interested when Allergan started paying...
...China isn't the only communist country to count on its women. Think of Eastern bloc athletes such as gymnasts Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut. But their male counterparts? They just didn't measure up in terms of Olympic glory. Even North Korea holds to the rule: both of its golds in Beijing have come courtesy of female Olympians...
...competition highlighted the two girls' contrasting gymnastics styles. Liukin, a willowy 5'3", resembles the gymnasts of the Nadia Comaneci era, when girls in the sport were long and lean and looked more like dancers than tight end defenders. Since the 1980s, however, thanks in part to the growing number of injuries and the more challenging skills the gymnasts are trying on the mats, the sturdier bodies, like Johnson's, at 4'9", have been claiming more titles - think Mary Lou Retton, Kerri Strug, Shannon Miller, and 2004 Olympic all-around champion Patterson. These are powerful athletes...
...Indeed, for all of Johnson's remarkable consistency and skill, gymnastics experts - and perhaps judges too - tend to favor the more artistic athletes among their ranks than the athletic ones. The legendary Comaneci, watching from the stands at the National Indoor Stadium, said "In order to get very high start values, they don't do any artistic moves, especially on the floor exercise. It's almost like you should do only six tumbling passes and finish." Liukin, however, is a gymnast with a balletic aesthetic, and one who can bring back the 'artistic' to artistic gymnastics, its official Olympic name...
...second for how well those skills are executed. The total can now range from 10.0 all the way to 17-something. "You have to do a bigger variety of difficult skills now," says Conner, who was in the stadium with his wife, the 1976 Olympic champion Nadia Comaneci, to catch the competition. "In our era, you could do one or two difficult moves, then fill out the rest of your routine with things you are comfortable doing. Now you have to be a freak of nature to be able to do a world-class routine." While gymnastics has always been...