A wry smile emerges from gymnasts the world over at Nadia Comaneci‘s comment about her history-making perfect 10 routine, 50 years ago this year.
“It wasn’t perfect,” Comaneci wrote in her book ‘Letters to a Young Gymnast’ of her first event at the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, the uneven bars.
“I felt an almost invisible hop on the landing.”
Even the first gymnast ever to score a perfect mark thought she could have done the routine better.
Such is the life of a gymnast in which perfection is the aim.
Gone are the days of the perfect 10 score, with ever more difficulty requiring a more convoluted scoring system, yet the base of the sport remains the same. So how do today’s gymnasts manage the delicate balance between striving to attain perfection in their sport and life outside the gym?
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How the world’s best gymnasts navigate perfectionism
“That’s a great question actually because I find a lot of the time it is hard,” said four-time Olympian Ellie Black talking to Olympics.com at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July and currently competing at the World Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam.
“You have this gymnastics mindset that helps you to be so good in your sport but outside of life you don’t necessarily need to be perfect at everything and you shouldn’t be perfect at everything,” said Canada’s three-time world medallist.
“It’s OK to not be good at something, it’s OK to try something new and fail, it’s OK to just have fun,” said Black who cited the people close to her as helping keep this aspect of her life in perspective.
“I think sometimes we have to check ourselves a little bit and just remind ourselves, this is something that helps us in our sport and at the elite level in these high-pressure moments but in the day-to-day it’s OK to take some of that stress and that pressure off.”
Another sage soul in the world of gymnastics, Eleftherios Petrounias, the Rio 2016 Olympic champion on men’s still rings, sees imperfection as a source of motivation in his lengthy career, which continues with an appearance at his tenth Worlds at the 2026 edition in the Netherlands.
“You have to know that perfection doesn’t exist, so you have to be aware that you are going to keep trying for something that you cannot achieve,” the Greek gymnast told us at the European Championships in Zagreb in August in which he won an 11th medal on the apparatus, a bronze to add to eight golds.
“I think that’s what motivates me and that’s what takes me, when I’m 35 years old, still here, still competing and still executing nice because I almost never like what I do. I’m like, ‘No, I don’t like it, again. I don’t like it, again’,” said the three-time world champion.
“In life it’s something different, in life I think imperfection is nice, it’s beautiful, otherwise you’re not enjoying moments,” said Petrounias who is married to fellow former gymnast Vasiliki Millousi with whom he has two daughters.
“I mean when everything is a mess even, I’m still happy because the most important thing is that you have the people you want around and the people that you love so then whatever happens, you can deal with it, with love and with patience, but if you’re hunting for perfection in your life, you’re not happy.”
A prescient thought as, for some, the balance is more precarious.
