Page 203 - Romania 100

The Centenary of Romanian Sports
A century of a beautiful Romania should also
be celebrated through
the sports, the eternal competition of man with
his own limitations, to the wonder of gods and the delight of people. With moments of eternity, unbridled joy, adoration and tears of happiness, sports have accompanied the Romanian people’s history in the last hundred years.
Our almost impossible attempt to render the greatness of sports for
the Romanians has only
the profane merit of remembering, for the centenary year, a bit of
the joy and happiness of a nation that went through severe hardships during its history. We have left this text be dictated by chronology, and the significance of the selected examples does not reside in their singularity, but only in their crowning of the Romanian sports.
Nadia, the goddess who
silenced the world
In 1976, when she was only
14 years old, Nadia Comăneci shone at the Montreal Olympics, becoming the first gymnast to receive the marks 10. On that day, the scoreboard read 1.00, the sign of a new beginning in world female gymnastics. No one expected
a gymnast to do a perfect exercise. The success was later replicated six times and the gymnastics world watched
in awe the goddess that descended on Earth.
It is not us, it is the Daily Mirror that wrote, referring to the performance of the 14-year old teenager: “The maximum rating obtained by Nadia Comăneci opens a new
age in the history of world gymnastics. From now on, we will talk about gymnastics before and after Nadia Comăneci."
She is recognised worldwide, being considered by many
the best gymnast in history, but for us Romanians she will forever remain the ‘Goddess of Montreal’.
203
PHOTO: AGERPRES