Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast who captured hearts and minds the world over with her perfect performances at the 1976 Olympics, was back where it all began Friday.
Comaneci, of course, is referring to her perfect score.
At the tender age of 14, she was the first gymnast to ever to record a perfect 10.
“The scoreboard was not ready for a 10,” Comaneci recalled, explaining her score showed up as a 1.00. “You know, one is a bad score in gymnastics.”
She was crowned the queen of the Montreal Olympics after going on to capture six more perfect scores and bringing home three golds, a silver and a bronze medal.
WATCH BELOW: Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci celebrates 40-year anniversary of Montreal Olympics.
Comaneci said she was unprepared for what came next.
“I was too young to understand,” she said. “I knew the Olympics are big, but I didn’t know how many people have watched that.”
She said she was surprised by the throngs of people who came to greet her at the airport .
“I went back to Romania, I almost wanted to get out of the plane and see 10,000 people at the airport and I’m like, ‘What did I do?'”
“I’ve done this for eight years, nobody came to wait for me at the airport.”
Comaneci was in Montreal on Friday to promote the upcoming Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, which take place in Quebec’s largest city next fall.
Over 500 competitors from 80 countries are scheduled to take part in the events running from Oct. 2 to Oct. 8.
“It will be a big show,” Comaneci promised. “What I used to do many years ago was hard. Now they do a lot more difficult skills.”
Comaneci also offered up some advice to Olympic snowboarding hopeful Elizabeth Hosking, who was in studio as guest host for Global News Morning in Montreal on Friday.
READ MORE: Rising star Elizabeth Hosking has eyes set on 2018 Olympics
According to Comaneci, it all begins with passion and some hard work.
“You do what you do because you love [it] and because you have passion,” she said. “Try to be a little better every day… enjoy every day of your progress.”
Once you reach the Olympics, it’s all about focus she said.
“Do what you know. Don’t do less, don’t do more,” she said. “Try not to think about what is going on outside and just focus on what you have to do. That’s simple, no?”
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