Word: nadia
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...ever set itself down on a two-mile runway with more assurance or aplomb. She leaps, twists, spins, and the 18,000 people in Montreal's Forum realize that they are witnessing an exhibition of individual achievement that is truly Olympian. The judges agree. Their verdict on Nadia Comaneci, 14, of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Rumania: she is perfect...
...swimmers who provided the opening week of the Montreal Olympics with their reigning deity. That huge mantle fell upon the tiny shoulders of Nadia Comaneci, who electrified the crowds and bollixed the computers by compiling the first perfect gymnastic scores. Performing her bold and difficult routines with consummate control, Comaneci (pronounced Com-a-netch) tallied three 10s in the team competition, two in the individual all-around contest, and two in the individual-apparatus competition-showings good enough to win her three gold medals, one silver and one bronze. Whether doing backflips on the beam or rocketing herself around...
...easy to forget she was not merely doing what comes naturally. Although her debut in senior international competition came only last year, when she leaped out of Rumanian obscurity to take the European Championship away from the Soviet Union's five-time winner, Ludmilla Turishcheva, 23, Nadia had been preparing for last week's moment of golden triumph for more than half her life...
...rolyi and his wife Marta, the gymnastic coaches at a special sports lycée in her home town. They had spotted her frolicking in a kindergarten playground and been impressed by her lack of fear. She was six years old. "At first it was like a game," said Nadia last week, showing no trace of nostalgia for those presumably more carefree days. "But by the age of eight," Coach Károlyi noted, "the students must be serious about gymnastics." Asked if Comaneci was exceptional then, he answers: "Many were. The important thing is that she is exceptional...
Meanwhile, her work over and her medals packed, Nadia Comaneci, the solemn muse of the Games, could leave for a Black Sea vacation with little concern that the second week of the Olympics would produce a star to outshine her. One cannot expect perfection too often...