Moment in Time: 18 July, 1976 - Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10

After 30 seconds of perfection on the uneven bars, the scoreboard flashed up ‘1.00’.

Nadia Comaneci glanced at the board, confused to have been given such a low score, but it was time for her to take to the beam.

What 14-year-old Comaneci didn’t realise was that she had made history. The judges had awarded her a 10.00, a score so unprecedented that the board had not been programmed to display a total higher than 9.99. No other Olympic gymnast had ever achieved a perfect 10.

Born in 1961 in the Carpathian mountains to a car mechanic and factory worker, Comaneci’s talent was spotted at the age of six after she joined a boarding school for young gymnasts. At one point she was rushed to hospital after apparently drinking bleach - a claim she has since denied, though she admits the training environment was extremely tough.

Her talent shone through in April 1975 when she competed in her first competition as an ‘adult’, becoming the youngest ever competitor at the International Champions All Tournament at Wembley. She went on to win four gold medals and a silver at the European Championships before making history at Montreal 1976.

Comaneci earned seven perfect 10s, helping the Romanian gymnastics team to their first Olympic silver medal for the team event. She also won individual gold medals for her work on the balance beam, uneven bars and the all-round competition.

Four of her perfect scores were awarded for the uneven bars, which was one of the events she struck gold. Three others came after Comaneci, standing 4 foot 11 inches tall, performed pirouettes and backflips on a beam measuring four inches across.

Comaneci's legacy

Though Comaneci‘s performance catapulted her to the status of a gymnastics icon, life back home continued in an unremarkable cycle of school and training, punctuated only when those who had seen her face grace the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated pointed or stared.

Over 40 years later and Comaneci’s name remains synonymous with the perfect 10. She still holds the record as the youngest Olympic gymnastics all-around champion, something that is unlikely to change given age restrictions implemented after her time. Now gymnasts must be at least 16, or turning 16 in the calendar year, to compete at the Olympics.

Other gymnasts have followed Comaneci’s feat by providing their own perfect 10 performances, but a change in the scoring system in 2006 means we will never see another 10 at the Olympics. Comaneci’s feat remains untouchable.

Comaneci fled Romania in 1989, just weeks before the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s brutal regime. Today she resides in Oklahoma, running a gymnastics academy with her husband and former US Olympic gymnast Bart Conner. But the country she helped bring to Olympic greatness has seen her visit to launch her own gym - aptly named GymNadia - to inspire the next Romanian prodigy.

Comaneci has become a symbol that an athlete from Romania can become the best in the world - inspiring fellow Romanian Simona Halep. As Halep climbed towards her player box after winning the 2018 French Open final, the first person she embraced was the gymnastics icon.