Nadia Comaneci

📍Onesti, Bacau, Romania

“Nadia Elena Comăneci was born in November 1961 in Onești, an industrial town in the Bacău region of Romania, at the foot of the Carpathians. She was a lively, energetic child, and at about six, Béla Károlyi, who was looking for young gymnasts, spotted her turning cartwheels in her school playground. She joined the gymnastics school that Károlyi and his wife, Márta, had set up in Onești, and trained there for long hours under their demanding regime. At thirteen she won the European championships, and at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, at fourteen, she scored the first perfect ten in Olympic gymnastics history; the scoreboard, which had no room for it, showed 1.00. She won three gold medals there, and two more in 1980. In 1989 she escaped from Romania to the United States, where she settled.”

Sources: Comaneci, N. Letters to a Young Gymnast (2004), Basic Books; Judd, R. Nadia Comaneci (2009), Crabtree Publishing; IOC Olympic archives