Nadia Comaneci Trivia Quiz

Answer: Romania

Olga Korbut, another gymnastics legend, was from the U.S.S.R. (specifically Grodno, in modern-day Belarus). Nadia was Romanian (although she's now an American), and she belonged to the first generation of the gymnastics legends that Romania is now famous for producing.

Answer: Onesti

During its Communist years, Onesti was officially renamed Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, but to its residents it was still Onesti. After the Romanian revolution, it took back its old name. Onesti was where the Karolyis (Bela and Marta) established the program that would turn Romania into a gymnastics superpower. Deva was where the Karolyis were forced to start over after persecution by the Romanian government in the late 1970s, but they turned their luck around and in the process Deva became a nationally-recognized institution that still stands today. Little girls all over Romania dream of being asked to train with the national team at the club that the Karolyis built, CSS (Clubul Sportiv Scolar) Cetate Deva.

Incidentally, the experimental gymnastics school in Onesti where Nadia began her career is still going strong - it's also traditionally been the place where the junior national team trains, although in 1999, the junior team was transferred to Deva.

Answer: no, she fluffed her beam routine

She was only nine then, and she made a mess of it - she fell off the balance beam three times. Bela Karolyi noted that she fell off, got back on, and promptly fell off the other side. Despite this, the Onesti team won Nationals. Nadia finished 13th.

Answer: an Eskimo

Bela Karolyi gave her the Eskimo doll in 1970, after her disastrous first meet. He said it would bring her luck and reminded her never to finish 13th again. In a question/answer session published in "International Gymnast," Nadia noted that the doll was still in her brother's house back in Romania.

Answer: 7

She was the first female to earn a perfect 10 in a gymnastic event, and went on to do it six more times in the course of the competition. Almost every gymnastics fan has heard the story of how the scoreboard was not equipped to handle a 10 because no one had ever achieved perfection before, so it flashed a 1.0 as the score. Nadia and Karolyi were understandably upset until they found out what it meant.

Answer: False

False. That honor belongs to Larissa Latynina, of the former Soviet Union. Latynina's record stands not only in the gymnastic's world. Over the course of her three Olympics (1956, 1960, and 1964) she won 18 medals, 9 of them gold, and was a record for having won more total Olympic medals than anyone, male or female, in any sport (the record was still standing at the end of the 20th century, after the Sydney Olympics).

However, Nadia is credited with being the more talented gymnast, because when Larissa competed, gymnastics was considered by many to be technically "easier". Latynina was not an innovator. Largely due to the influence of Bela Karolyi, Comaneci's generation revolutionized the sport, changing it from stylized ballet to a more acrobatic and technically demanding sport. Comaneci was the best example of Karolyi's "new kind of gymnast" - younger, smaller, more flexible, and more daring.

Answer: Yelena Davydova

The 1980 Olympic Games were boycotted by many western countries in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As a result, it became known as "the Communist Olympic games". Nadia's defeat was a very controversial judging decision, and most gymnastics fans agree that she was "ripped off".

The story there was that Nadia was the last competitor in the all-around, on beam. The judges scored the Soviet gymnast Davydova above her, Karolyi knocked down the scoreboard, and the judges changed Nadia's score several times and had a 27 minute argument about her score.

In the end, they valued their careers more than their integrity and gave the title to Davydova by a narrow margin. Believe that or not, this is a fact: Karolyi spoke out against the biased judging to the Western media and when he got back to Romania he was heavily reprimanded for confirming the West's opinion of the "first Communist Olympic Games".

The Romanian regime's persecution of him for this action became unbearable, and soon after he and his wife Marta defected to the United States.

Answer: 3

Nadia won the European Championships in 1975, 1977, and 1979, and was the only three-time European Champion (until Sveta's title in 2002).

Answer: 1989

She defected just weeks before the Romanian Revolution. The oppressive Romanian government was not happy to lose their biggest star and status symbol, and her family left behind in Romania was imprisoned and interrogated. The defeat of the brutal Communist regime and the execution of the dictator Ceaucescu saved the Comanecis, who had themselves been scheduled for execution.

Answer: Bart Conner

They own a gym in Norman, Oklahoma, and have several business ties to gymnastics (including one with the popular magazine "International Gymnast").