In honor of Nadia's birthday I am featuring her gold medal winning balance beam routine from the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.
This particular routine is from the event finals where she won gold with her seventh perfect ten of the Games in Montreal. I looked at a lot of her routines and I have to say I really prefer her beam over any of her others.
Of course, the Romanian team has a long history of exceptional balance beam. It's not necessarily her skills or the difficulty of this routine that make it so beautiful. What she does is she will add small movements at the end of a series, a little flick of the wrists and a little nod of the head and just her presence that says "watch me." When I was a kid, my mother brought me and my sister a gymnastics documentary that featured all the greats, I watched it again and again, watching Nadia in awe and wanting to be just like her (I was 11 and this was the mid '90's).
Here is Nadia, always awesome, and always fabulous.
This particular routine is from the event finals where she won gold with her seventh perfect ten of the Games in Montreal. I looked at a lot of her routines and I have to say I really prefer her beam over any of her others.
Of course, the Romanian team has a long history of exceptional balance beam. It's not necessarily her skills or the difficulty of this routine that make it so beautiful. What she does is she will add small movements at the end of a series, a little flick of the wrists and a little nod of the head and just her presence that says "watch me." When I was a kid, my mother brought me and my sister a gymnastics documentary that featured all the greats, I watched it again and again, watching Nadia in awe and wanting to be just like her (I was 11 and this was the mid '90's).
Here is Nadia, always awesome, and always fabulous.
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