Letters to a Young Gymnast (5 page)

Dear friend, of course you have asked me about the 1976 Olympics. I had hoped you might be interested more in who I am now, and I'm tempted to give stock answers to a question that never seems to be put to rest—a question that has, at times, plagued me because I am no longer that tiny little girl with a brown ponytail in a snow-white leotard with red, yellow, and blue piping. I'm not sure I ever even knew her all that well.

You want me to remember every leap, somersault, and dismount from a time in my life that I thought was just another competition and that even now I find hard to put into historical context or perspective. I am not angered by your question but by my own confounding and complex feelings on the subject. And in truth, to know who I am now is to understand 1976 and what happened during and after that fateful Olympic year.

Do not think I fashion myself a victim, unless it is a victim of good fortune. But I am older and wiser, and I understand that with fame comes a sea of responsibilities that a young child must swim through. Sometimes, I felt myself sink beneath the surface of the water, and though I always struggled to rise and breathe, there were precious seconds when, I must confess, I just wanted to embrace the cold darkness.

How can I begin to explain that time? I will pull out a dusty copy of Jean Ure's book,
Romanian Folk Tales,
and turn to my favorite story, “Necessity.” After you have read it, I'll attempt to shed some light on an Olympics that the world seems to recall better than the girl who held the spotlight and never quite escaped its glare.

Necessity is what you do in life when there is only one path, choice, or desire. Necessity is synonymous with need, requirement, inevitability, stipulation, and obligation. But at the 1976 Olympics, necessity for me meant only listening to Bela and Marta Karolyi.

The Romanian government used to pour money into its Olympic programs because our leaders believed that athletes represented the power of the government and validated our way of life. As a result, the infighting for individual athletes' rights to comprise their respective Olympic teams was fierce. Gymnastics was no exception,
and because successful athletes generated privileges for each gymnast, their families, and especially the coaches, the pressure was unbelievable. Although our Onesti school's gymnasts had proven their worth, taking the top six places at the Romanian National Championships, Bela recalls that the federation still chose four gymnasts from Club Dinamo and only three from our school to be on the Olympic team.

“We have the right to compete as a team!” Bela told the government officials. “Nadia Comaneci is the European champion; the rest of the team has beaten every other gymnast in our country,” he declared. “We won the Nationals!” In the end, it was decided that there would be a final competition in Bucharest—Onesti versus Dinamo. Bela moved our team to Bucharest. The summer was incredibly hot, but we practiced day in, day out, regardless of the heat. Club Dinamo's coaches took the weather into account and on particularly hot days allowed their gymnasts to go to the beach. I remember how jealous I was that Dinamo's gymnasts were given vacation days. I could taste that jealousy like the salty sweat that covered my skin and never dried.

One particularly sweltering afternoon, the general in charge of sports in Romania surprised us at the gym with a visit. As we dragged ourselves through our full routines, Bela and the man chatted, until the general asked where Dinamo's girls were. Bela replied, “At the beach.” The general was furious that Dinamo's gymnasts weren't practicing and called for a meeting of both teams the following morning. When Dinamo's head coach couldn't make him understand that his gymnasts had needed some time to cool off, the general made Bela the head coach for the Nationals and the Olympic team. He now
had the power to choose all the gymnasts. After watching both teams practice for another week, Bela made his decision. He took six gymnasts from our school and two alternates from Dinamo to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada. It was actually a fair decision on his part—our gymnasts were leaps above Dinamo's.

Friend, I need to put things into perspective for you because you are under the illusion that the Romanian team, myself included, thought that the Olympics were the biggest event in our lives. That was not the case. Until 1976, I believed that the European Championships were the most important gymnastics competition in the world. Everything I knew came from what I was told by my coach and my government. I'd never watched the Olympics on television, let alone televised gymnastics competitions from around the world.

So when I arrived in Montreal for the 1976 Games, I was flabbergasted. The Olympic Village blew my mind—its size and the number of security officials, coaches, and, above all else, athletes in more sports than I'd ever heard of. What I remember most was that every thing—
everything
—was free. You were given a badge, and with it, you could see movies in the village's theater; you could get a soft drink; and you were given matching clothing, bags, hats, and pins. To me, it was so high-tech, so strange and exciting and absolutely wonderful. That first day, I was afraid to close my eyes because I didn't want to miss anything. Little did I know then that missing everything was part of the Karolyis plan to protect their gymnasts.

The men's and women's residences were separate, so Bela couldn't monitor us at night, but Marta was more than effective. We were not allowed to go
anywhere alone. Everything was scheduled for us—breakfast at 7:00 A.M., training, rest time, lunch, and so on. We had a doctor traveling with the team, and he made sure we didn't try any food other than what we knew—meat, salad, nothing fancy. I saw, for the first time in my life, pizza, cottage cheese, peanut butter, and breakfast cereal. The smells of the cafeteria were overwhelming.

The Olympic Village, after my initial awe, became like anywhere else the team had traveled. We were just in another venue to have another competition. We did not march in the opening ceremony because Bela didn't feel comfortable having us stand on our feet for six hours with competition beginning the next day. I must admit that I agreed with his decision about the ceremony and virtually everything else during the Games. I didn't want anything—not food or late nights or catching a cold—to interfere with my ability to perform. Later, as I grew older and more independent, I would clash with the Karolyis' total control over my life, but I will never argue that in the early days, their style worked for me and helped me become a great gymnast.

You ask what my dreams were, going into the Olympics. When the media asked me the same question, I said the obvious, “I hope I'm going to win a medal.” It was a reasonable dream in my mind, not an unbelievably audacious statement. I wanted to compete and do my job well, and I would have been happy with whatever color medal I received. I was not at the Olympics to be in a frenzy of grabbing gold medals. Everybody thinks of gold only, but if you win a bronze by moving from sixth place to third, that's success. I have always appreciated every medal I have won in that way. If I do my job and
receive silver, then that's what I deserved. If I want more than that, then I should be better.

Of course, Bela and Marta's dreams were different from mine going into the Games. As adults, seeing their gymnasts with so many abilities, they wanted us to live up to our potential and to reflect their own talent. Show me fifty kids in a gym, and I can pick out the one or two with talent, which means they have incredible flexibility, balance, desire, and something magic that is indefinable and very rare. The Karolyis did that with thousands of kids and winnowed them down to the team from Onesti at the 1976 Games. They had a lot riding on their choices and decisions. The government had been generous and at times supportive of their experimental school. It was time for Bela and Marta to show their worth if they were to garner continued support. That meant we had to perform to our potential.

For me, I guess, my personal goal for 1976, which I did not share with anyone, was to create my own dream. I had no one to follow—my parents were not athletes, so I wasn't walking in their footsteps. My dream was to discover myself, to know what I could do, to push myself, and to be better than anybody else. You probably want to know why. But I don't have a good answer to what created my desires. It's just the way I am.

My first goal at the Olympics was to perform my podium workout well (this is the workout held in front of judges before the competition), so that I didn't bring any training mistakes into the real competition. When I was younger, Bela always used to tell me to pay attention to specific things during each routine, such as hand movements, certain skills, or inflections in the music. By 1976, he had stopped doing this because he finally
realized that when he told me to pay attention to one thing, I'd make a mistake on something else. What I needed to pay attention to was vastly different from what he imagined. He was just creating more problems for me. But, to give Bela his due, at the 1976 Olympics he also created an environment in which I could shine. As I've tried to explain, the media, fans, and judges must notice athletes in order for those athletes to rate scores that will place them on the podium. Some coaches are just coaches. Other coaches, like Bela, are coaches, publicists, agents, and defenders all rolled into one. If an athlete is very talented and lucky enough to have a coach such as Bela, she has a better chance of thriving in the world of competitive athletics because she can focus on her sport and leave the politics to her coach.

What did you mean in your last letter when you said that I “came into my own” in 1976? I did not materialize at age fourteen at the 1976 Games. Gymnasts don't become great in a single year, just as actors never have “overnight successes” but instead work decades at their craft before their “big break.” I was already a great gymnast by 1976, but no one knew that in the United States or Canada. Bela understood that nobody knew me or the Romanian team. Everyone expected great things from the Soviet and German gymnasts—athletes such as Olga Korbut and Ludmila Tourischeva. We, however, were from a tiny country no one could even find on the map. So Bela devised a scheme to focus the world's attention on his little girls.

The podium workout is an opportunity for all gymnasts to perform their routines on the actual apparatus used in the Olympics and in the gym where the competition will be held. Each team is given twenty minutes per apparatus, and most gymnasts perform watered-down
routines so that they can avoid last-minute injuries brought on by nerves. The stands are filled with members of the media, fans, and judges. I have already told you that judges who do not recognize gymnasts tend to score them lower than the well-known girls. In 1976, the Romanian team was completely unknown, and Bela knew that had to change if we were to have a chance of winning.

“Now entering the arena for the 1976 Olympics, the team from Romania.” I heard the loudspeakers blaring our country's name again and again and a light smattering of polite applause. It was time to enter the gymnasium for our podium workout, but Bela held us in the tunnel that led to the arena, not allowing us to enter. We were all dressed alike and wearing ponytails. Bela instructed us to march into the arena like soldiers and to perform our full routines with no mistakes. The loudspeaker blared our country's name again. “Mr. Professor, they're calling us,” I ventured. Bela said to let them wait. When we finally entered the gym, the entire audience was watching the doors because we'd repeatedly failed to walk through them when called. The applause was a bit louder, and I could feel thousands of eyes watching us.