Thursday, August 02, 2012

Young and the Restless....

Last night I watched the Olympic Gymnastics Team win the gold medal.  How fortunate we are to have On Demand; back when I was younger you just had to schedule your life around watching the games.  There was no immediate tweets, 24 hour news or On Demand to replay everything for you.

Watching brought me right back to my very first Olympic memory, and the little girl we all were in awe by - Nadia Commeneci.  Who didn't love little Nadia and her coach Bela Karoli?  You didn't have to be Romanian to root for that little girl.  And what little girl didn't want to be her?  From that point on I used to always say I wanted to actually be her when I grew up.  Of course, I meant I wanted to be a gymnast, but....clearly, that did not come to fruition.

I remember the day my parents brought me home posters to put on my walls.  For some reason, I think it was McDonalds who was the sponsor of the Olympic events that year, because I seem to think I had to wait until my parents got something there before I could get a poster of my girl to hang on my walls.  And when they brought it home - I couldn't wait to hang it up.  I had two - one of her on the balance beam, and one of her on the floor.


So it would suffice to say that at the tender age of 6, little Nadia was my first hero.
And that is a piece of Olympic history that I'm glad I got to witness first hand.

1 comment:

Elaine said...

I loved watching Nadia too but since I am older than you, my first gymnastic hero was Olga Korbut. She was so fun to watch.
She sparked my interest in gymnastics and I've been watching the sport ever since.