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- PEOPLE, Page 85Giant Leap
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- By J.D. Reed/Reported by Wendy Cole
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- In the 1976 Olympic Games, diminutive Rumanian gymnast
- Nadia Comaneci, 28, captured the sport's first perfect 10 and
- the hearts of the world. Last week she took another dramatic
- leap when she fled her repressive native homeland, first to
- Hungary and then on to the U.S. Comaneci, a gymnastics coach,
- reportedly told Hungarian border guards that she left behind a
- "neatly furnished flat, a car and financial security for the
- sake of freedom." Her former coach Bela Karolyi, who defected
- to the U.S. in 1981, told interviewers, "I'm ready to help her
- in any manner."
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