he Olympics had been in turmoil for four years. From terrorists
capturing and then assassinating eleven Olympic athletes in the
Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany, in 1972, to twenty-five
countries boycotting the summer games in Montreal, Canada, in 1976,
politics, sometimes violent, had shaken the very roots of the Olympic
movement.
But even after the horrifying occupation of the Olympic Village
in 1972, the summer Games went on four years later in Montreal.
There, in the midst of roiling controversy over countries politicizing
the event for nationalistic purposes, a solitary, diminutive fourteen-year-old
gymnast from Romania succeeded in floating above it all. Her performance
had no equal before, and has not been equalled since. She riveted
the world, refocusing its attention from the noise of politics to
the fundamentals of physical prowess and beauty in motion that seemed
to transport her audience every time she performed.
Nadia Comaneci was just four feet, eleven inches tall when her presence
enchanted the world. Her teammates, standing on the opposite side
of the balance beam from where she would mount, would have just
been able to make out her head rising above the four-foot apparatus....
