The surveillance continued until she fled Romania. The Securitate began spying on Nadia when she was 13, shortly after she won medals at the 1975 European gymnastics championships in Skien, Norway. But Comaneci insisted that they all receive the same treatment. When they reached Hungary, officials there planned to send some of the group back to Romania. Years later, she claimed Panait held her captive after she had immigrated to the United States and took money from her. "Nadia considered meeting him was like a window suddenly opening and a fresh breeze entering" in promising a different future for her. "He exploited her unstable nature," Olaru said. "I drank two mugs of wine so that if they caught me, at least I had the excuse that I was drunk."Ĭomaneci's escape was planned in mid-November after a chance meeting with Romanian émigré Constantin Panait at a party in Bucharest. I was "surprised and intimidated," he says in the book. Talpos only found out that night that Comaneci was part of the group. On a pitch-black night with a full moon, local guide and shepherd Ghita Talpos led six people on a six-hour journey past Romanian border guards into Hungary. The book, which draws mainly on declassified files of the infamous communist secret police, opens with Comaneci's risky escape in late November 1989.
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