Nadia Comăneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
The 1976 Summer Olympics (French: Jeux olympiques d't de 1976), officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad (French: Jeux de la XXIe Olympiade) and commonly known as Montreal 1976 (French: Montral 1976), were an international multi-sport event held from July 17 to August 1, 1976 in Montreal, Canada. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam on May 12, 1970, over the bids of Moscow and Los Angeles. It was the first and, so far, only Summer Olympic Games to be held in Canada. Toronto hosted the 1976 Summer Paralympics the same year as the Montreal Olympics, which still remains the only Summer Paralympics to be held in Canada. Calgary and Vancouver later hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1988 and 2010, respectively.
Twenty-nine countries, mostly African, boycotted the Montreal Games when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) refused to ban New Zealand, after the New Zealand national rugby union team had toured South Africa earlier in 1976 in defiance of the United Nations' calls for a sporting embargo. The Soviet Union won the most gold- and overall medals.
Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner (born November 12, 1961), known professionally as Nadia Comăneci (UK: , US: , Romanian: [ˈnadi.a koməˈnetʃʲ] (listen)), 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.
Comăneci is one of the world's best-known gymnasts and is credited with popularizing the sport around the globe. In 2000 she 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. In 2001 she became a naturalized United States citizen and has dual citizenship, having maintained her Romanian citizenship.