EDITOR’S NOTE — With the Tokyo Olympics postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, The Associated Press is looking back at the history of Summer Games.
AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds interviewed Nadia Comaneci about her “perfect” performance at the Montreal Olympics and her life since.Nadia Comaneci did not expect perfection.
Apparently, nobody else did either.There were digital scoreboards inside the gymnastics venue at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where the numbers would pop up after each athlete completed an event.
High-tech for that time, the scoreboard was programmed to light up three digits — with a decimal place affixed after the first number.And even though a perfect score would be a 10.00, the way the scoreboards were set.