HAVANA -- Incredibly, this summer it will have been 40 years since Nadia Comaneci turned her perfect-10s at the Montreal Summer Games. As difficult as those 10s were, the trick she has perfected since is perhaps all the more difficult.
Over the years, Nadia has emerged as one of the very few Olympic stars who is not only known by her first name but known virtually everywhere. She and her husband, the American gymnast Bart Conner, himself a gold medalist in Los Angeles in 1984, are hailed far and wide as first-rate ambassadors for the Olympic ideals.
This perhaps explains why, a few weeks back, the Rome 2024 bid committee tweeted out a photo of Nadia during her competition years:
Buon compleanno a @nadiacomaneci10, una delle più grandi ginnaste del ventesimo secolo. #WeWantRoma2024 pic.twitter.com/ERNyaXmY47
— Roma 2024 (@roma2024) November 12, 2015
Only to have Conner file this rejoinder:
Rome is an incredible city, but don't be misled @nadiacomaneci10 and @bartconner support @LA2024. Go LA! pic.twitter.com/HILTNCx6T4 — Bart Conner (@bartconner) January 22, 2016
With U.S.-Cuba relations moving toward a new normal, Comaneci took part this past weekend in a variety of events in Havana, including an appearance at the Cuban national gymnastics academy, where -- among others -- the 2015 men's world championship silver medalist, Manrique Larduet, trains.
So, too, little girls who dream of being Nadia.
He, and they, were thrilled -- in the kind of occasion the Olympic world needs way more of -- the star herself, the embodiment of dreaming big dreams.
It all reminded her, Nadia would say afterward, of Romania a long time ago. And what was -- still, is -- possible.
