Word: comanecis
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Next, Disney World was a happy and uneventful stop. Then the Dallas barbecue was a hazard only to gymnasts: for them, just to whiff Texas barbecue is to risk going to bed as Nadia Comaneci and waking up as Shelley Winters. Finally, a little regretfully, the team disbanded. "Celebrity's been a big change for me," Retton said. "In a way it's really neat. But it won't change me. I'm still just plain Mary Lou. Meeting the President was neat. I'm a little sad it's over after nine years...
...land that gave the world Nadia Comaneci in 1976, sports authorities still appear to favor the development of women gymnasts at the expense of men. Only two male gymnasts appeared in Los Angeles, and neither placed in the top 20. Rumanian women have shown sharp improvement in track and field. They finished first and third in the 800 meters and first in the long jump. Most glowing of all, Maricica Puica, 34, won a startling victory in the women's 3,000-meter race followed by a bronze in the 1,500 meters...
...following night, it was the women's turn. But instead of protecting a lead, the U.S. team was chasing the Rumanians. With Comaneci in residence at the team quarters in the Olympic Village (and introduced each night to an ovation from the crowd), Rumania's women could never forget their legacy or fail to uphold it. Yet it was a burden they bore lightly. When one of the team's top performers, Lavinia Agache, 18, was asked if she wanted to be as good as Nadia, she replied, "Yes. I want to be better...
There are no Nadias among them-her particular perfection remains unchallenged-but it is fitting that the Rumanians won the gold medal on the balance beam, the event that Comaneci had once commanded with uncommon aplomb. The beam, a 4-in.-wide strip that demands the greatest precision and exacts the severest penalties for the minutest errors, is the great winnower of women gymnasts. It is a tightrope without a net, and every bit as dangerous as turning handsprings on a cliff. Beam injuries have been crippling, and few women ever lose their fear of it. When it is done...
Retton, in fact, is the exemplar of what Bela Karolyi calls "the new kind of gymnast." Says he: "She's strong and powerful and athletic; not a little flower, a little flyer." Karolyi, who discovered and trained Comaneci and presided over the early development of Retton's principal rivals from Rumania, Szabo and Agache, knows a trend when he sees one. In his 4-ft. 9-in., 92-lb. dynamo, he knows he has found a star...