New mission in a new world order

At 14, Nadia Comaneci stunned the world with her performance at the Montreal Olympics. Now she's on a different mission - planning to visit Ireland in her work with the Special Olympics. In Bucharest, she tells Ann McElhinney how she coped with fame, defected to the West in 1989 and has found fulfilment living in the US.

Nadia Comaneci orders food like Meg Ryan in the film When Harry Met Sally: she glances at the menu, ignores it and explains in detail to the waiter exactly what she wants.

I get the impression it's not the first time she's ordered grilled fish with grilled vegetables. If grilled food can get you looking that good at 40, I want to change my order.

Sitting opposite me is the woman who in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal achieved the first perfect score in gymnastics. This is Nadia. The little Romanian girl from behind the iron curtain is all grown up.

Unlike many child stars who mature into adult wrecks, Nadia at 40, is articulate, self-assured, looking good and she's busy. Home for Nadia is Norman, Oklahoma, where she lives with her husband, the US Olympic gymnast Bart Connors.

"I was 14 when I first met Bart. I wasn't interested in boys then. When I went to America we started to do gymnastic shows together. We were friends first. It's the best way to be with a husband," she says.

The couple, who married in 1996, run a very successful gymnastic school in Oklahoma. They also own a business, which makes gymnastic equipment, and Perfect 10, a TV production company, which covers gymnastics for specialist cable channels. Nadia is also is on the lecture circuit. Oh, and they publish a magazine.

She's back in her native Romania to promote the Special Olympics. They are to be held in Ireland next year and Nadia plans to be there. Romania has a small team and she is trying to encourage greater participation - not an easy task in a country whose care of the handicapped achieved worldwide notoriety in 1990 with pictures of grim institutions full of neglected and deprived children.

Eventually I ask the question she has been answering for over 25 years. What's it like to be perfect?

Nadia smiles: "I don't know what perfection means. I don't know if it exists. I had a lucky day - sometimes you can be good in the training, but it doesn't work out on the day." When she remembers that night in Montreal she is modest.

"I didn't realise how important it was and how historical it was. I didn't realise that for years. It was only when I finished the sport and got away that I realised. I think it was better not to have realised at 14. Now when I watch it I'm glad I'm not in that girl's shoes."

The Olympic scoreboard couldn't cope and registered 1.0; it had never had to show 10 before. All scoreboards were subsequently readjusted. They needn't have bothered. No one has scored 10 since.

The notion that child stars miss out on childhood is something Nadia strenuously denies.

"I was happy. My coach was telling me to do something 10 times and I was doing it 15 times. I was and still am very driven and ambitious. Lots of children sit on the couch and watch TV or sit in the mall all day. I travelled the world doing what I loved. It's better that way, don't you think?" Who could argue? But surely, all the travel and competitions were stressful?

"No, I liked it because at 12 and 13 I was going to countries that other kids could only see on a map. I was thinking during geography class that I have been to those countries - that I have been on the Mississippi on a boat, that I have been there." Nadia received a small wage under the Ceausescu regime which, in an increasingly austere Romania, allowed her to buy the small items young girls so cherish.

"I would buy nice clips for my hair." She was not lonely because she had the friendship of the other girls in team.

"There were 15 girls, we were like sisters and we had more opportunities than any parent could provide at the time - no kids had opportunities then." Today, Nadia is still amazed by those moments in 1976. As she remembers she talks excitedly - like the little girl the world remembers.

"Do you know in the year after '76, 150 babies in Montreal were called Nadia. And everyone had ponytails. I cut my hair in 1980 and everyone was disappointed. I just wanted a change. I guess the woman in me kicked in."

UNLIKE the corpulent ex-gymnasts who mushroom after they stop their rigorous training, Nadia is an advertisement for fitness. She's about a size 8 but with impressive curves. Her fitness message is simple.

"I work out every day no matter where I am - a little every day. Don't make it too complicated or you're not going to do it." Her discovery as the great genius of gymnastics might never have happened but for her mother's frustrations.

"I started when I was six and a half. I was a very active kid. And my mother was upset because I was always bouncing on the furniture and breaking things. She complained to one of our neighbours and she was told of the local gymnasium." The rest really is history.

"I didn't want a normal life. Without gymnastics, I could be 40 now and not have achieved much. 1976 is a long time ago, I never thought people would know me 30 years later."

Nadia Comaneci defected to the West in 1989. "I took a train from Bucharest to Timisoara and then was driven to Sinnicolau Mare on the Hungarian border. At midnight that night the seven of us who were trying to escape got together and started walking." This uncertain trek in the winter meant there was little room for luggage.

"I left everything behind, even my medals. I defected because I wanted freedom. I was banned from travelling because they were afraid I would not come back, so I decided to find my own way to get out. I knew it would be a risk but I like doing risky things in my life." Two Romanian Americans who had helped other asylum-seekers make the trip were their guides.

"They told us not to talk, that there would be a lot of border guards and we had to be quiet. We walked in a line one behind the other. We were to walk until we saw a sign we didn't recognise. Six hours later we saw a very small sign. We knew we were in Hungary." But her ordeal was not over.

"We got caught by the Hungarian police. They interrogated us separately. They recognised me and were very kind. I pleaded for the others. They told us if we tried to leave Hungary we would be sent back to Romania. They wanted to help us get work in Hungary." But nothing was going to stop Nadia. The determination she had shown all her life did not desert her.

"We escaped again and were able to meet the two Romanian Americans who were helping us. We had been told the way to recognise their car was that only one of the headlights would be lit. Everything happened so fast. There was no time to think of anything." Eventually they managed to cross into Austria and freedom.

"We went to the US Embassy. Everybody stopped working so they could help me. They asked me when I would like to go to America. A Pan Am flight was leaving in two and a half-hours. That was the flight I took."

Two weeks later the revolution in Romania toppled the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu: "After the revolution I was happy for the people. Maybe now they will have a chance of a better life."