Letters to a Young Gymnast

by Nadia Comaneci

  Friend, I understand the curiosity in your last letter about our return to Bucharest. You’ve watched countless athletes return victorious to your own country, and there is an expectation for ticker-tape parades, speeches, and screaming fans. Until 1976, that had never happened in our country, so how was I to know or be prepared for what lay ahead? When our plane landed in Bucharest, I still had no clue. I stepped out the door and down the stairs, and the thousands of Romanians who had come to meet our plane overwhelmed me. We’d gone to countless important competitions before, but never had we been met by cheering fans or had Nicolae Ceausescu order a celebration for our arrival. I recall that I had been carrying a doll in my hands and that I was crying because I had lost it after somebody pulled on her leg. It was scary—all those years when nobody cared and now, suddenly, everyone was pushing, pulling, and trying to touch me.

  We were taken to an awards ceremony, and Ceausescu personally gave out Romanian government awards to the Karolyis and the gymnasts. I had never met Ceausescu before, and it was like meeting the president of the United States. It was an honor for a kid, a big deal. Politics back then was a different world, and I had nothing to do with it.

  So, you want to know what changed. Nothing . . . at first. I went back to Onesti and back to the experimental school, classes, and practices. My father still didn’t have a car; my mother was still a homemaker. I received a monetary award from my government for my medals but nothing too big; after all, I lived in a Communist country. I was also still receiving a monthly stipend from the government for being an elite gymnast, but my mother was in charge of all that money. I’m lucky that she saved it because in the end, I desperately needed what she put away for me.

  Please don’t assume, like everyone else does, that when I won the 1976 all-around gold medal I became a wealthy girl. Perhaps you’ve heard rumors, but our country was closed to foreign journalists, and the only information that got out to the world was what my government chose to share. Sometimes it was the truth, but more often than not it was self-serving. I still lived in a simple dormitory a few minutes from home. I returned every weekend to my family’s house, but in truth, I was bored there because at the dorms, I had twenty other girls to play with. And at home, my mother still made me do the dishes.

  There was no time to rest on my laurels. No one is selected off the streets for the Olympics. You work your way up to it. Despite what my mother and I originally may have thought, gymnastics was not exactly a hobby for me. Not if I wanted to succeed, avoid injuries, and be the best in the world. Plus, Bela was not the kind of guy who would tell me that I was perfect. He always said I could do better, and I lived under that. He never put too much emphasis on those times when I did something great. It was always about the next time.

  So when I returned to school, I still woke up every morning and had breakfast at 7:00 A.M. and then went to the first training session from 8:00 until 11:00. I went to classes from 11:00 until 2:00 P.M., rested for a few hours, and then headed back to the gym for late practice until 7:30. We ate dinner after our second practice, did homework, and then had lights out by 10:00 P.M.

  Our meals were all very regimented—mostly grilled meat, fish, and salads and fruit. We didn’t eat any pastas or bread because the team doctor didn’t believe they were important components of a well-balanced meal. The doctor designed a menu based on what each week demanded nutritionally, such as protein, vegetables, fruit, and milk. Meals were not about enjoyment but about nutrients. You ate what was on your plate, whether you liked it or not. There were a few exceptions. I liked fried cheese, and the team doctor let me have it once a week. We all loved chocolate and were given a piece each day before training because the doctor believed it gave us energy. To this day, I love chocolate—probably because I was only allowed to have a little of it as a child.

  You asked in your last letter if the rumors about Bela Karolyi’s cruelty as a coach were true. I want to try to put that question into perspective by asking you a few questions. How much can you really understand of a man who struggled to survive under Ceausescu’s regime? Who defected with his wife but was forced to leave his daughter behind, with the knowledge that it might take years to get her out of Romania? Can you comprehend what it takes to help a young girl recognize her potential and then live up to her dreams . . . dreams that are enormous and beyond the reach of almost anyone in the world? How much can I really understand Bela, for that matter? I can only tell you what I perceived then and what I believe today. You will have to make your own judgment on this subject.

  Bela Karolyi is a great coach; he is a masterful motivator and a powerful man who is as complex as any human being. I do not know the details of his coaching relationships with other gymnasts, but I do know that he is a good person. He motivated me as well as the rest of our team by the sheer force of his personality, which could be incredibly fun and animated when we tried our best or disappointed and somber when we failed him and ourselves. Because we all knew that Bela was a skilled coach and a fair man, we took his coaching very seriously. But Bela also understood how to read our emotions, and when he sensed we were tired, he’d devise countless games that combined fun with the conditioning exercises we still needed to do to complete our workouts. We’d have races while doing backbends or hold each other’s feet in the air in a wheelbarrow position, using our arms to scamper across the floor exercise mat. Bela used fun, discipline, and our powerful desires and personalities in combination with his own to motivate us to strive for success.

  Bela and I did not always see eye to eye, and as I grew up, we needed time and distance to help us both deal with the changes that came. But he was never cruel to me. Fierce, yes; a tough disciplinarian, yes; and fair—always. Plus, he was funny. I know that when Bela came to the United States, he didn’t speak the language. Maybe some of the things he said to his gymnasts then didn’t quite translate into humor. But there’s also a big difference between the cultures of Romania and America.

  Four years after Bela arrived in the United States, he made Mary Lou Retton into a top-notch gymnast, and she won Olympic gold. For a little while, everyone thought Bela was great . . . but happy endings are only interesting for a short time. It’s controversy that sells. Bela single-handedly refashioned the U.S. system of gymnastics. In order to be competitive with the Soviets and Romanians, he told American girls that they had to practice six hours a day, not three. He would have loved to find a way for his gymnasts to work less and be that good. But it just wasn’t possible. The secret of success was the three extra hours. Everyone started to do it, and everyone got better. For the first time in its history, the United States began winning gold medals—lots of gold medals. But when there is money to be made and when there are disappointed girls and parents, there is always the danger of being targeted by unhappy people. I’m not saying that Bela has always done the right thing, for it’s impossible for a human being to be right all the time. But only he and the gymnasts in question know the truth of their situations. I was not there, so I can only tell you what I know of my old coach.

  Bela always believed that if a kid didn’t want to work as hard as was necessary to win, fine. But he wasn’t going to waste his time on any gymnast who wasn’t as committed as he was to achieving in the sport. What’s wrong with that? If a child just wants to play, then enroll her in a gymnastic program that’s designed for play. If she wants to shoot for the moon, then work with Bela. It takes a great coach to train a great gymnast, and not all coaches can work effectively with certain girls or boys. Finding the right coach who can bring out a child’s motivation, fire, and desire is a difficult process. It’s important for a coach to help an athlete work harder and improve if that’s the ultimate goal. But in general, it’s also important to have someone in your life who will challenge you to be your best. Bela did that for me, and I feel fortunate that our paths crossed.

  To my knowledge, Bela has never forced a child to do anything. He says only that “this is the right way to do th
ings.” It has been documented that his style of training works. If parents don’t like it, if it’s wrong for their child, then they should lead that child in a direction more suited to his or her individual personality. I don’t really understand all the hoopla that’s ensued over the years about Bela’s style. My friend, if you don’t believe in Bela’s way, then get a book about gymnastics and read it. There are no secrets. Back then, we didn’t know too much, but everything is in black and white today. As for the gymnasts and parents who say that Bela was mean or that he called children names, what do I know of that? He treated me fairly, but it was a different time and place, and I was a driven young person. I trusted Bela with my life in the gym. He quite literally kept me from breaking my neck. And I trusted him with my career, too. Let me tell you a story that you may have heard a little about before.

  Paris, France, 1974. The French government was holding a gymnastics demonstration, and officials there were in need of more gymnasts. They called our government, which in turn called Bela and ordered him to take two gymnasts to the prestigious event. Bela selected Dorina and me. Both of us were incredibly excited; we had never been to Paris. When we arrived at the airport in France, there was no one there to meet us. None of us spoke French or English, and Bela was forced to figure out a way to communicate in order to get us to the competition. With little time to spare, we finally found a driver and raced through winding streets and ran red lights to get to the arena on time. When we arrived, Bela left us in the car to make certain we were in the right place. We weren’t.

  The French had not expected Romania to send such young gymnasts, and believing we weren’t capable of performing alongside gymnasts such as Lyudmila Turischeva, they sent us to a competition for younger girls. Bela was furious. He decided we’d participate in the smaller competition, but then he’d try to find a way into the one for seniors. In a small gymnasium that reeked of cigarette smoke, we performed our routines, then raced back to the car and charged to the other arena. Dorina and I thought at the time it was just a fun adventure, but Bela was dead serious.

  We were barred at the entrance of the arena by security guards. While the interpreter tried to explain our presence, Bela grew impatient. He told us to stick close, and then he pushed his way through the barriers. We ran behind a stack of mats and hid. The exhibition was half over, and the gymnasts were performing their vaults. Ludmila was the last to vault, and as soon as she finished, Bela told me to run down to the floor of the arena and do a Tsukahara vault. There was no time to measure my run or where the springboard was positioned. He told me I could do it anyway, so I did. I had complete faith in him.

  I performed a perfect vault. The confused exhibition officials located our interpreter and asked him to explain who we were and where we were from. When the people in the audience heard I was only twelve, they went crazy. Still, we were told not to interrupt the rest of the exhibition. Bela agreed, but when Lyudmila finished her beam routine, he sent me out again. The crowd once again was delighted, and the officials had no choice but to give permission for Dorina and me to perform a floor routine together. We dazzled everyone.

  This story isn’t just an example of Bela seizing the moment so that his gymnasts would be better known before the European Championships. It shows that I was willing to tune out the world and concentrate completely at Bela’s request because, back then, I would have followed him through fire if he told me it would make me a better gymnast. No child could have believed so much in a man who was unfair or cruel.

  Bela was a lot of things, though, and one of them was a believer in nontraditional medicine. I remember the time there was a flu going around our experimental school before a competition. He believed that if we ate raw garlic every day, we wouldn’t get sick. We hated garlic because when we worked out and sweat, we smelled like hell. The weeks before the competition, we ate whole cloves of garlic every day, and Bela also had it put into our food like grated cheese. Raw garlic! We went to the competition without a single case of the flu on our team. Still, every day, Bela still made us eat garlic in case the gymnasts from other countries might have the same illness. Their coaches, curious about what we ate and how it helped us perform, began to copy our eating habits. Pretty soon, every gymnast in Europe was eating raw garlic. I remember saying to myself, It’s not the garlic, people, it’s the training! We simply worked harder.

  We did work harder, even when we didn’t recognize it as work. Bela knew me—he knew all his gymnasts so well. He could read everyone’s body language without our saying a word. If we took fifty seconds to chalk up our hands before getting on the bars instead of the ten seconds it usually took, he knew we weren’t ready to learn a new skill. He’d switch gears and devise exercises that would be fun but that would also help us move one step closer to performing whatever skill had initially frightened us.

  When his gymnasts were ready to get on an apparatus and learn something new, Bela would always be there for us. He never—never—let us hit the ground. As I have said, what he expected in return was obedience. We had to be on time. On the dot. Infractions of the rule would result in being left home during competitions. We had to do the exact number of repetitions of each skill as asked. And when we were told to go to sleep, we were to immediately turn out the lights, cease talking, and, above all else, not jump on our beds.

  I will never forget the one time Bela caught us up late, playing, jumping, and giggling. He came into our dorm seconds after we’d heard him and flicked the light off. “Your light was on,” he said, smiling. We lied and disagreed. “You must not be sleepy. Maybe you need to get a bit more tired before you close your eyes.” He took us outside in our pajamas and told us to start running. We were laughing and giggling though the whole punishment. But the next day, when we were expected to wake up early, practice, go to school, practice again, and do our homework, we were exhausted. I don’t remember ever not turning out the lights on time again.

  After 1976, Bela became even stricter. I believe it was extremely difficult for him to face the fact that we had reached our midteens. He became overprotective and, as I saw it, overbearing. He believed his gymnasts were being spoiled by attention, though I never really understood why. I remember only that there was a lot of interest among the media about how we trained and what we were allowed to do and why. Bela hated that.

  I began to have disagreements and misunderstandings with Bela by mid-1977. Just little things at first. I was trying to stretch my wings and grow up, and like any teenager, I had the desire and need to be on my own. I saw girls my age dating, going to movies, driving cars. I wanted those things, too. All of a sudden, there were other attractions, and because I was sixteen and knew that my career would end sooner, not later, my focus drifted. Maybe, I thought, I was getting a little old for this. I started going to practices late. Bela was completely unused to any defiance on my part. I always did things by the book because I felt that was the only way to improve.

  Do not misunderstand me. I believe in the disciplined life—maybe too much so at times. It depends on what kind of life you want to have, though, and what you want to accomplish. Even today when I travel for work, I accomplish my goals because of discipline. If I have a 2:00 P.M. press conference, I work backward and figure out what I can get done before I have to shower, drive, and arrive at the venue. I work things through down to the smallest detail, such as when I can get in a thirty-minute workout, how long it will take to shower, and whether I have time for breakfast or if I should eat while working. I can only give everyone the best of me if I am carefully organized and scheduled. That is the disciplined life.

  My parents were always disciplined, so I didn’t just learn that way of life from Bela and Marta. My father worked every day and rarely took a sick day. My mother was extremely organized and hated things to be out of place in her home. I took to their habits and was always incredibly neat. In school, I kept blue pens in one place, black in another. It sounds a little weird and compulsive, but to be “normal�
� and do normal things doesn’t get you anywhere except normal. I always wanted to be extraordinary. My childhood showed me that discipline works—if I practiced, ate well, and turned off my lights at 10:00 P.M., I’d be rested and ready for the next day. It is a simple and good way to live.

  ■ Tough Teens

  The most important part about the vault is the run. It’s an 82-foot-long run to the springboard. Gymnasts don’t count their steps but instead adjust them as they run so that they hit the springboard at the same spot each time they vault. Most elite gymnasts take the same number of steps every time they make their runs because those steps are ingrained in their minds and muscle memory.

  A great vault is dependent upon the speed of a gymnast’s run and her push-off from the vault. Without good speed, a vault requires much more effort to perform. Without enough push, it’s hard to have the height and rotation needed for a good landing. The danger of not having enough speed or push is either landing on your head or underrotating and breaking your leg or jamming an ankle. I liked vaulting, but there were some days when I woke up and just didn’t feel like running fast.

  Becoming a teenager wasn’t that simple, and neither were the 1977 Prague European Championships. First, they were televised in Romania, and after the Olympics, the country, including President Ceausescu, took a big interest in gymnastics. Second, the competition was very important to me because I was defending my title as the European champion. Third, the championships signaled the end of my childhood relationship with Bela and the beginning of a complex collaboration between a strong-willed young woman and her determined coaches.