19. Nadia Comaneci was just 14 when she made sporting history by scoring the first ever Perfect 10 at the Olympics
It’s one of the most iconic photographs in the history of sports: a beaming Nadia Comaneci stands with her arms aloft beside an electronic scoreboard. The scoreboard reads that she scored 1.00 for her gymnastics routine. In fact, she had scored 10.00. However, the organizers of the Olympic Games had told the company that made the scoreboards not to bother making the displays more than three digits. After all, it was simply assumed that, given the nature of Olympics gymnastics scoring, a perfect 10.00 would be impossible to achieve. At just 14 years of age, Comaneci proved them wrong, and made history in the process.
It was at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal that the Romanian teenager wrote her name into the history books. She went to the Games as one of her country’s brightest young athletes. Up until that point, she had excelled in a number of disciplines, though had rarely achieved perfect scores. However, she truly excelled once she got to Canada. In the compulsory team section of the gymnastics competition, she scored the first-ever Olympics perfect 10.00 in the uneven bars. The crowd in Montreal were confused. Surely there was some mistake? In the end, the judges had to make a special announcement, confirming that the audience had indeed just witnessed history being made.
What’s more, Comaneci went on to notch up an additional six perfect scores at the Games. She took home two Gold medals, a Bronze and a Silver. While several other gymnasts have since achieved perfect scores, Comaneci remains the youngest-ever athlete to win the all-round Olympic title, taking Gold at the age of 14. And it’s unlikely this honor will ever be taken away from her – now a gymnast needs to be at least 16-years-old to compete in the Olympic Games.
