Nadia Comaneci

Okay, so those who know me are aware of my obsession with Olympic artistic gymnastics. I was all about the Fab Five this year. My Twitter feed has had more gymnastics on it than anything else. But anyways, those "Go World" commercials kept mentioning the first Olympic "perfect ten" in history, and I saw that it was earned by gymnast Nadia Comaneci. Naturally, my curiosity led my to Youtube to see what this routine was about. Y'all, this sport had changed SO MUCH since 1976! Just watch this video.



Now, let's compare that to the bar routines today...

(Mustafina from Russia.)

And how about beam? Comaneci scored a 10 there as well!



And today:

(Deng Linlin who won Gold on this event for China.)

Now, I love how the standards of difficulty have progressed over time, but I do wish the routines still had the element of grace that Nadia displays. Everything flows, and it truly looks like a routine     as opposed to a sequence of skills. That, and she just legitimately looks like she is having fun!

That's something that you don't see very often. Part of the reason I loved Shawn Johnson and love Gabby Douglas is because they would leave the floor smiling from ear-to-ear! I don't know, I just like to see people doing what they love, and being able to tell that they really enjoy doing it :)

By the way, I am in no way trying to bash today's artistic gymnasts, because I happen to really love them.... a lot. Haha. I just wish I could take their talent and intensity and blend it with some of that 1976 brand of poise, which one Youtube commenter referred to as "ballet on beam" (in response to her balance beam performance, of course). She looked like the bubbly, spirited 14 year old that she was, and I thought that was pretty cool :)

So yeah, that was my rant. Haha. In other news, I am going to she are my highlight of the day: Midnight Waffle House trip with Chandler, Jesse, Carlton, Ashlee, Elizabeth, and Julie :) I LOVE MY FRIENDS! Goodnight all :)