Nadia Comaneci

Despite her demeanor Comaneci managed to win over both the judges and the audience at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada. She also made history at these games by becoming the first gymnast to score a perfect ten on an apparatus. The record breaking moment came with Comaneci's performance on the uneven bars. However, the judging equipment was not equipped to display the four digits of a 10.00 score, so the scoreboard simply showed 1.00. The crowd soon understood the meaning of the score when the announcer declared, "Ladies and gentleman, for the first time in Olympic history, Nadia Comaneci has received the score of a perfect ten," reported Septima Green in Top 10 Women Gymnasts.

Comaneci earned a total of seven perfect ten scores at those Olympic Games. She won three gold medals for the all-around competition, uneven bars, and balance beam. She also won a silver medal for the team competition and a bronze medal for the floor exercise. Comaneci became the first Romanian to win the all-around title and she was also the youngest all-around champion at 14 years old. "The technical purity of her performance is her most brilliant characteristic. Physically she has strength, speed, and flexibility. Mentally, she has intelligence, phenomenal powers of concentration—and courage," Bela Karolyi told Peter Bonventre of Newsweek.

Comaneci also tried to endear the crowd by smiling and waving more often than she had in other competitions, but this did not change the media's impression of her as an unhappy child. "Here was an example of a dour, cheerless child driven to icy perfection by a totalitarian state," wrote Robert Lindsey of the New York Times. After the 1976 Olympics rumors also circulated claiming that Comaneci was no longer a top gymnast because she had gained a lot of weight and had tried to commit suicide. Comaneci denied those rumors and continued to compete internationally.