October 1974

She calls her parents from Varna, where the World Championships are being held. She can’t take part because she is too young. She complains about everything, the journey, the weather, Béla, the gym. She is even missing her younger brother, although she never pays him any attention when she’s at home. She hangs up, promising to go to bed so that she won’t miss her train the next morning.

In November she will be thirteen. Sometimes Gheorghe and Stefania don’t know how to speak to this child of theirs. How to respond when she spits disdainfully that she is ‘hors concours’ as if it were a shameful disease. They rarely go to see her train. Have only seen one competition. They are unaware that a French journalist, that same morning in Varna, dazzled by the ‘hors concours’ display by the Romanian team, has asked to meet Béla, but as no interpreter is available, he cannot in the end invite the coach on to his TV programme, which he begins with ‘I have seen a young Romanian who, if everything goes well, will no doubt become one of the world’s greatest gymnasts.’

‘Did you know at the time that you were one of the best?’

‘No… I heard rumours, there was talk that in the team there was a girl who was really good. But I didn’t know it was me.’

When I discover an archive article telling the story of the gymnastics gala in Paris, I find it so hard to believe because everything in the account seems to me already to have been rewritten for the legend, scripted: the aberration committed by the French Gymnastics Federation, which invites part of the Romanian team to a prestigious gala, but which, when it discovers how young the gymnasts from Oneşti are from photocopies of their passports, sends them to a demonstration by junior beginners.

Over the telephone, Nadia confirms every detail of this epic. I sense she is still amused by their adventure, and expects me to feel the same way. A few days after our conversation, when I find I am unable to write about the episode with the humour she would like to find in it, I get back in touch with her and confess I am concerned by Béla Károlyi’s instruction to Nadia to perform extremely dangerous skills to impress the Parisian public.

‘…Listen, I loved the salto precisely because it was dangerous, I wanted to do it all the time. I didn’t need to be pushed into it.’

‘…Without any warm-up? That was dreadfully risky!’

‘…For me, that episode showed above all what little regard France had for Romania. Can you send me what you’ve written today? I’ll call you back tomorrow. Thanks.’