[5] At the same Games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal), she received six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals.

One of the world's best-known gymnasts, Comăneci was praised for her artistry and grace,[6] which brought unprecedented global popularity to the sport in the mid-1970s.

She later worked with and married American Olympic gold-medal gymnast Bart Conner — a wedding which was held in Bucharest after the fall of the Communist regime and televised live in Romania.

Nadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onești, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacău County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia.

[15] In a 2011 interview, her mother said that she enrolled Comăneci into gymnastics classes because, as a child, she was so full of energy and active that she was difficult to manage.

[16] After years of top-level athletic competition, Comăneci graduated from Politehnica University of Bucharest with a degree in sports education, which qualified her to coach gymnastics.

[17] Nadia began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called Flacără ("The Flame"), with coaches Duncan and Munteanu.

[citation needed] In 1970, Comăneci began competing as a member of her home town team and, at age nine, became the youngest gymnast ever to win the Romanian Nationals.

In 1971 she participated in her first international competition, a dual junior meet between Romania and Yugoslavia, winning her first all-around title and contributing to the team gold.

For the next few years, she competed as a junior in numerous national contests in Romania and dual meets with countries such as Hungary, Italy and Poland.

[22][23] Comăneci's first major international success came at the age of 13, when she nearly swept the board at the 1975 European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Skien, Norway.

In the pre-Olympic test event in Montreal Comăneci won the all-around and the balance beam golds as well as silvers in the vault, floor and bars.

Accomplished Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim won the golds in those events and was one of Comăneci's greatest rivals for the next five years.

[37] Back home in Romania, Comăneci was awarded the Sickle and Hammer Gold Medal for her success,[38] and she was named a Hero of Socialist Labor.

Robert Riger used it in association with slow-motion montages of Comăneci on the television program ABC's Wide World Of Sports.

The song became a top-10 single in the fall of 1976, and composers Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin Jr. renamed it as "Nadia's Theme" in Comăneci's honor.

[18][40] Following the 1977 Europeans, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation removed Comăneci from her longtime coaches, the Károlyis, and sent her to Bucharest on August 23 to train at the sports complex.

[18][41] After surviving a suicide attempt,[42] Comăneci competed in the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg "seven inches taller and a stone and a half [21 pounds] heavier" than she was in the 1976 Olympics.

[30] A fall from the uneven bars resulted in a fourth-place finish in the all-around behind Soviets Elena Mukhina, Nellie Kim, and Natalia Shaposhnikova.

She was hospitalized before the optional portion of the team competition for blood poisoning, which had resulted from a cut in her wrist from her metal grip buckle.

"[47] She won two gold medals, one for the balance beam and one for the floor exercise (in which she tied with Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim, against whom she had also competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics and other events).

[48] In 1981, the Gymnastics Federation contacted Comăneci and informed her that she would be part of an official tour of the United States named "Nadia '81" and her coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi would lead the group.

During this tour, Comăneci's team shared a bus trip with American gymnasts; it was the third time she had encountered Bart Conner.

Comăneci later wrote in her memoir that many believed Romania went to the Olympics because an agreement had been made with the United States not to accept defectors.

[18][32][52][53] Comăneci moved to Oklahoma in 1991 to help her friend Bart Conner, another Olympic gold medalist, with his gymnastics school.

[58][59] On May 18, 1997, Comăneci and Conner guest-starred on the season 3 finale of Touched by an Angel, titled "A Delicate Balance," where they performed a brief floor exercise within a montage scene.

[69][70] She also offered daily analysis of the 2016 games (along with other Olympic champions such as Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, and Conner), for the late-night show É Campeão, broadcast on Brazil's SporTV.

[31] In 2003, the Romanian government appointed her as an honorary consul general of Romania to the United States to deal with bilateral relations between the two nations.

[74][75] To raise money for charity, Comăneci participated in the celebrity version of Donald Trump's reality show The Apprentice.

"[77] "With her trademark verve, graceful delivery and unflickering precision, the 14-year-old from Romania set the bar to which future generations of gymnasts would aspire."