The former tennis player Ion Țiriac (86 years old) told what he did immediately after the great gymnast Nadia Comăneci (64 years old) obtained the first 10 in the history of gymnastics, at the Olympic Games in Montreal, from 1976.
“The day Nadia took 10 at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, I was in the United States, and coincidentally after that Olympics I was with CBS, who had started doing more tennis work.
I say: ‘Hey, guys, how much money will you give me if I bring you Nadia for an hour?’. ‘One million’. You figure out what a million dollars was in 1976. I say, “Okay.” And I called the federation: “Forget what’s the matter.”
After an hour, he calls me back: “We are not revealing our secrets for the next Olympics.” “You’ve never seen a million dollars in your life,” I tell him. It couldn’t be done, that’s it, those were the times“, declared Ion Țiriac, at Digi Sport.
Ion Țiriac, whose biggest regret in life is not winning the Davis Cup, will open the gym named after Nadia on June 1. Plus a bronze statue of the champion, weighing 150 kilograms, which will be posted at the entrance.
“Back to today’s Nadia. Nadia belongs to us. And he is the first man in this world who was considered perfect in sports. And then, if this work still belongs to us and the whole globe applauds it, I thought we should do something too.
I started my gym, which is going really well. Thank God I found one that I can see keeps its word and will be ready on June 1st when all the appliances I bought arrive.
We are building a hall that can accommodate several hundred children, much larger than the one in Onești“, said Ion Țiriac.
50 years after Montreal, Nadia was honored at the Laureus Awards in Madrid. In Romania, 2026 is the Year of Nadia.
