Hi,

I love the pictures of Natalia. She truley was one of the greats. I
will never forget her one handed sideway split handstand! I remember
as a kid I had a book with a picture of her doing the handstand. I
read on another website that someone visited Natalia at her gym in N.
Jersey and took books and magazines with pictures of her in them.
From what I read I guess Natalia was suprised because she had never
seen any books or magazines with her picture in them from that era
(late 70's early 80's.) This was suprising to me because here in the
states at that time she was well known in the gymnastics world. I
guess maybe she and her team had no idea of the influence they had on
many young girls here in America. I remember my friends and I talking
about Nadia and Natalia--they seemed to be the most popular. We would
even pretend we were them and have gymnastic competitions amongst
ourselves during recess at school. There was just something special
about Natalia that stood out. Her unique skills and pretty face. She
was an innovator and raised the bar for gymnaststs. She was a
gymnastics star and probably didn't realize it at the time. Things
were different between Russia and the US at that time. I have often
wondered if she even knew that she was on tv every week here in
America at the opening of an NBC show called "SportsWorld". Every
week at the opening of the show they would show a quick clip of
Natalia doing a vault. Wide World of Sports ABC network always
played a clip of Nadia Comaneci at the start of their show. I used
to watch these every weekend just to see them for a few seconds.
Back then gymnastics was only shown once in a while so you had to
find little things like this to watch if you loved
gymnastics.....anyone remember this? Nowadays there are sports shows
and channels left and right--not to mention the web to watch
gymnastics. Back then you couldn't even use a VCR to tape anything
so basically you saw what you saw and that was it. Anyone know of
any sites that have video of the 80 Olympics with Natalia's
performances? How old was she when she retired?