Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner (born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976, at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games. At the same Games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal) she received six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow Comăneci won two more gold medals and achieved two more perfect 10s. During her career Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals. One of the world's best-known gymnasts, Comăneci, along with Olga Korbut of the Soviet Union, displayed artistry and grace, which brought unprecedented global popularity to the sport in the mid-1970s. In 2000, Comăneci was named one of the Athletes of the 20th Century by the Laureus World Sports Academy. She has lived in the United States since 1989, when she defected from then-Communist Romania before its revolution in December that year. She later worked with and married American Olympic gold-medal gymnast Bart Conner, who set up his own school. Early life Nadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onești, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacău County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia. She was born to Gheorghe (1936–2012) and Ștefania Comăneci, and has a younger brother. Her parents separated in the 1970s and her father later moved to Bucharest, the capital. She and her brother, Adrian, were raised in the Romanian Orthodox Church. In a 2011 interview Nadia's mother said that she enrolled her daughter into gymnastics classes because as a child she was so full of energy and active that she was difficult to manage. After years of top-level athletic competition Comăneci graduated from Politehnica University of Bucharest with a degree in sports education, which qualified her to coach gymnastics. Early gymnastics career Comăneci began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called Flacăra ("The Flame"), with coaches Duncan and Munteanu. At age 6, she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school after Károlyi spotted her and a friend turning cartwheels in a schoolyard. Károlyi was looking for gymnasts he could train from a young age. When recess ended, the girls quickly went inside and Károlyi went around the classrooms trying to find them;