While everyone applauded the smiling child prodigy, one of the world’s favorite female athletes secretly led a life full of pain and every time she thought the end was near – she would fall lower.
At the Laureus Awards in Madrid, where the main award for Sportsman of the Year once again went to ours Novak Djokovicwe had the opportunity to see many big names from all fields.
One of the most notable was a famous Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneciwho walked the red carpet in Hollywood diva style, wearing a lace skirt and biker-inspired jacket.
It certainly goes with her status as a pop star, which she built in parallel with a great sports career, and she achieved everything on a path full of thorns and suffering.
Nadia Elena Comaneci she was born on November 12, 1961 in Onešta, as a daughter George and Stefanie-Alexandrine. It is interesting that she was named after an actress in a Russian film that her mother watched in a different state, and her younger brother also grew up in the family next to her. Adrian.
Already at the age of six, Nadja started training in gymnastics at a school near her home, with a famous Hungarian-Romanian tenor. Bela Karolja. She was only nine years old when she started competing, and already at ten she participated in international competitions.
Nadja Comaneci’s career – success and brilliance
The first serious one success she achieved at the European Championships, when she won the all-around and all individual disciplines except floor, where she was second, so she was declared gymnast of the year.
Nadja Comaneci was only 14 years old when she became a major star Olympic Games, which were held in Montreal in 1976. She passed with the highest score on the two-height loom, and at these Games she won five medals and became one of the youngest winners of Olympic gold in the history of the Olympic Games.
She was exceptional and Olympic Games in Moscow In 1980, when she won gold on the balance beam, as well as on the floor, and two silvers shone around her neck, in the team competition and in the all-around.
Confused the computer too
Little is known that Nadja was the first to win a ten in the history of gymnastics, and she even found the computer, which was not ready for a score of 10.00 because it was programmed for only three digits, so instead of the grade she deserved, it gave her a unit. She started crying at that.
– I remember doing the exercise pretty well, but not perfectly. I remember not looking at the scoreboard, but paying attention to my balance after I finished the exercise. Then I heard a big noise in the hall. On the scoreboard, I first saw the number 073, which was my competition number, and then the score 1.00 below that. I was in shock. Nothing was clear to me – she told later.
She was not even aware of how much of a success it was – she did gymnastics for the medals, not for the grades.
After the Olympic Games in Montreal, overnight she became one of the biggest sports stars and synonymous with gymnastics, and then she experienced a dark and difficult story.
The life of Nadja Komaneči – torment and pain
As she told after arriving on American soil, Bela Karolja’s hall was both her torture chamber and refuge.
She trained six to seven hours a day, while Karolj demanded perfection from her and would not settle for anything less, but it was the only place where she could escape from the dark everyday life.
As it was later discovered, starvation was common among Karolje: the girls ate toothpaste before going to bed because they were hungry, and sometimes they were so thirsty that they drank water from a large cup. There were bulimics, and they all reported stealing food. As Nadja Komaneči told, on one occasion she was slapped for eating, once she did not eat for three days, and Bela had a habit of eating potatoes and steaks while hungry girls watched him.
– He was a bully, instilling fear in his gymnasts. When I spoke to Nadja many years later, she paled in horror when she heard his name. He was jealous. When they told him about Nadja’s successes, he would turn red with anger. He believed that he deserved the gold medals, not Nadja – said the Romanian journalist and writer Stejarel Olaruwho had access to Sekuritate reports that were declassified after the fall of communism.
As he discovered, Nadja was followed and watched, and she suspected that even people close to her were watching her.
Just a year after becoming a world wonder in Montreal, she tried to commit suicide by drank bleach. She couldn’t cope with the pressure and fame, hard training, so she had a nervous breakdown.
– On the one hand, I was glad that I did it, that I ended up in the hospital. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t have to go to train – said Nadja to Life.
She recovered for a long time and gained weight in the meantime, so she was banned from competing for a while, but she returned to Moscow even stronger.
Nadja, in accordance with her age, began to fall in love at an age in which much was expected of her, and she entered into a secret relationship with an actor and singer Stefan Banica. She got pregnant, and then the secret service visited Banica to force him to leave her. When she heard that, Nadja experienced it have an abortion and tried to commit suicide again.
– My life took on a new darkness. I had no income, my family was starving. Also, it is insulting that I was not allowed to travel. As my career was destroyed, I no longer had a reason to be happy. I just had to listen without question, just like I had done all my life. If Bela hadn’t defected, of course they would still be watching me, but his move was like a spotlight that blinded me like never before. I was their prisoner. In fact, I have been that all my life – said Nadja Comaneci.
A few weeks before the fall of communism in Romania and the overthrow of Ceausescu’s regime, in November 1989, Nadja fled from Romania to America. While Bela Karolj, who had emigrated with his wife Marta, was waiting for her in the USA, she did not answer him – it turned out that he Konstantin Panait, who helped her escape from Europe, kept her captive and exploited her popularity. He charged for her interviews and, it is believed, earned about 200,000 dollars, while the Romanian woman got nothing.
Only a year later, she managed to free herself with the help of a friend and started living in Montreal, Canada.
The West adored Nadja Comaneci, a miracle of a woman and a girl with a difficult life story, and she did not hide from the public – she became a model, advertised various gadgets, attended promotions…
In the mid-nineties, she got engaged Bart Connerwhom she met way back in 1976. Then they met for the third time, and he left an impression on Nadja in the seventies when “jumped around the bus chatting to everyone”.
They scheduled a wedding in Romania, in the Kashin Monastery near Bucharest. Nadja wanted her godfather to be the then president of Romania Jon Ilijesku, which he gratefully refused, but hosted the wedding.
Conner was baptized in the Orthodox Church because of the athlete, and among the wedding guests were big world stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jimmy Connors, Robert De Niro…
* Downloading part or all of the text and/or photo/video is prohibited, without indicating and linking the source and author, and in accordance with the provisions of the WMG terms of use and the Law on Public Information and Media.
BONUS VIDEO
How did Romania attract hundreds of thousands of tourists?
( Glossy, Tamara Sorak Ranković )
