40 Years After Scoring A Perfect 10, Legendary Gymnast Nadia Comaneci Can Still Pull Off A Handstand

On July 18, 1976, a pony-tailed Romanian teenager did what no other person to walk on earth did before - score a perfect 10 at the gymnastics event at the Olympics. As the years have passed since that monumental feat, Nadia Comaneci continues to make the world marvel at her and stir up emotions four decades later.

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Nadia Comaneci, over a span of two Olympic Games, won a total of nine medals - five gold, three silver and one bronze. Three gold, one silver and one bronze of those she won in the 1976 edition itself.

She vividly recalls each time whenever she gets reminded of that feat. "Every time there is a zero in the anniversary, it's kind of bigger. There was 10, then 20, then 30 and now 40, it seems like a lot of numbers. It's like half of your life is gone," Comaneci is quoted as saying by Reuters.

"But to realise that it's 40 years since it happened, it's like 'oh my gosh, really?' Because it's the 40th year, I feel like I've been celebrating the anniversary the entire year. Everyone I meet this year wants to talk about it," she said.

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Now 54, Comaneci still makes heads turn as she continues to do the perfect handstand - that is to stand upside down with your hands on the ground.

The coming weeks there will be constant reminders that she'll have to face and soak in as she heads to Montreal on July 21 where her 10-year-old son Dylan will get his first chance to see the Olympic Stadium "where his mom's name is engraved". Then she goes to Rio for the August 5-21 Games.

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The epic fail of scorecard, not its fault

"I remember when I started to do the compulsory (routine on the uneven bars), I thought I did a pretty good routine but I didn't think I did my perfect routine. I know I didn't watch the scoreboard as I was already thinking about the balance beam after I finished. Then I heard the big noise in the arena, I look around, I turned my head and saw the scoreboard. I first saw the 073 which was my competition number and 1.00 score which was under. I looked at one of my team mates and she shrugged her shoulders, indicating that something was wrong with the scoreboard. It all happened so fast," said the 54-year-old, who stays in Oklahoma.

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Gymnastics officials were not expecting any gymnast to attain perfection, therefore the electronic scoreboard installed in Montreal lacked the space needed to accommodate all four figures to illustrate the perfect 10 mark and then she recorded 10.00, it showed 1.00. "The fact that the scoreboard could not show the 10 added to the drama, it made it bigger," she said breaking down in laughter. Scoring the first 10 in history was a big deal but the fact that even an electronic scoreboard could not figure out how to put out a score, it made the story more historic," she said.

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Born in 1961 in the factory town of Onesti to a car mechanic named Gheorghe and his wife Stefania, Comaneci still has to pinch herself when she thinks how her life is now dictated by something she did "as a 14-year-old child". "At that time I didn't understand the impact it made as I wasn't competing to make history, I was competing to win medals. It's very special that it will be there for eternity," she said.