Nadia's Perfect Ten Broke the Scoreboard and History
About this episode
The episode discusses Nadia Comaneci's historic perfect ten score at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and its impact on gymnastics.
On July 18, 1976, a nineteen year old Romanian gymnast named Nadia Comaneci did something the scoreboards at the Montreal Olympics literally were not built to handle. She performed her routine on the uneven bars, stuck her dismount, and the judges awarded her a perfect ten. The problem was that the electronic scoreboard only had four digits allotted for the score, and its designers never imagined anyone would need two digits before the decimal point. So when the judges entered a flawless ten, the board flashed a confused and slightly comedic one point zero zero instead. Nadia calmly walked away as if nothing strange had happened, while the entire stadium buzzed trying to figure out what they had just witnessed. Commentators had to explain to bewildered television audiences around the world that no, she had not scored a lowly one out of ten, she had actually done the impossible and earned a perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics history. She would go on to score six more perfect tens during those very Games, en route to winning three gold medals, and forever changing what was thought to be achievable in the sport. What makes the story even more delightful is the sheer human…
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