43 years later, Nadia Comaneci still inspiring others

Albany

On a January visit to the Capital Region, Nadia Comaneci was shown a highlight clip of her gymnastics routines at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.

"It's hard to believe it has been 43 years," Comaneci said, "and I don't look the same."

A 14-year-old Comaneci didn't comprehend the impact her performance had on the hundreds of millions who watched, but it is a little more clear now, at age 57.

Comaneci, a native Romanian who is married to U.S. gold-medal gymnast Bart Conner and now lives in the U.S., stopped competing in 1984, but she has seen the growth of women's sports.

In August she will be the honorary captain of Team World in the inaugural Aurora Games, to be held Aug. 20-25 at Times Union Center. The six-day women's sports festival was created to celebrate women athletes and their accomplishments.

"I was so young that I didn't know what that meant to make history," Comaneci said. "After the competition, women came to me and said, 'Thank you for breaking the ice for women,' and I didn't know what that meant. I didn't go there to make history. I just wanted to be the best."

One of those women who watched those Montreal Olympics, in which Comaneci won three gold medals and became the first gymnast to earn a score of a perfect 10, was Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who is honorary captain of Team Americas for the Aurora Games.

"Nadia was 14," Joyner-Kersee said, "and I was 14, wanting to go to the Olympics, understanding it, seeing her compete and trying to figure out was it a 10. I'm telling you, I can be a gymnast — until I grew."

Joyner-Kersee grew to 5-10 — a half foot taller than her gymnastics idol — and veered toward track, where she won six medals over four Olympic Games.

"Sometimes in your generation," Joyner-Kersee said, "you lose sight of the...