Strasbourg

They say: she’s no longer the schoolgirl given a 10 in her gym notebook, a little girl playing with her dolls in front of the entire planet. They note: she has cut off her bunches and stored away her ribbons, her body fills out her costume. They are indulgent: growth is ‘understandable grounds for a bit of time out’, after all, she has ‘caught’ sixteen. They count: a gold medal on the beam, a fall on the bars, less speed on the vault, even if she had lost five kilos this summer before getting here. They are amazed: have you seen that Portuguese girl who weighs only twenty-nine kilos!

The young woman will be summoned before them all, gathered stern-faced in the press room. They will expect tears and excuses, she will smile to soften them. ‘Luckily I have changed, at Montreal I was fourteen. I am completely… normal for my age.’ Then politely, a hostess concerned about her guests’ obvious boredom will ask, ‘Any further questions?’ Then they will notice the blond tints in her hair and before moving on to another interview write quickly in their notebooks one last time, in parenthesis – Nadia C. or the death of a ‘fairy princess’, while she protests gently, ‘…I couldn’t stay at one metre forty-seven for ever… could I?’

She will say she’ll see them again in eight months, in Copenhagen. They will turn up there despite their disappointment. They will go, and they will fall in love all over again. Because she’ll be back. The Romania–Russia contest will again be won by the Romanians, thanks to her. Her chestnut hair will be done up in bunches, exactly the same as at Montreal, tied up with red ribbons, a sign. They will almost forgive the kid they once more want to call the kid, in spite of her one metre sixty-one. They will be fooled and moved at the same time when they think of her immense efforts to achieve this veritable comeback: forty-five kilos, four kilos less than at Strasbourg, competitor number 62. She has pulled herself together. On the last day of the competition, she will criticize herself in front of them in a whisper, no, she doesn’t touch anything sweet, yes, she has added new difficulties and yes, there’ll be more of them in Moscow. They will praise her intelligence for having understood that ‘if she went on growing without putting the brakes on, she would have disappeared from the team!’ Crowned European champion for the third time in the Brøndby Hallen, she will give the lie to those who asserted that gymnastics was a succession of ‘difficulties only capable of being mastered by short-limbed creatures unaware of any fear: little girls’.

Some people will want to spoil the party by mentioning the Soviet Elena Moukhina’s exhausted face, only to be told that ‘the reservoir of Russian gymnasts is so vast they have infinite possibilities’. What about how thin Nadia is, the hollow between her thighs, her extreme, emaciated pallor? When they raise the problem with her coach at a press conference, he will come up with an explanation. ‘It’s true, Nadia has lost her baby cheeks, but above all, her features grow hard when she concentrates.’

Interviewed by the BBC, to the question, ‘In 1978, you came back into the limelight. Were you no longer a little girl but a… woman?’ she will respond with embarrassment, like a repentant alcoholic. ‘Yes… That was my… big problem.’ Then she will tell of how she went nine days without eating and only drinking water while training hard to lose the extra ten kilos. She will be warmly congratulated on her willpower. She will be applauded and offered a doll for her collection.