The perfect 10 is what changed Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton from pert pixies into international sporting stars and helped make gymnastics one of the most popular events at the Summer Olympics.
But that pristine evidence -- a clear-cut electric shock to the crowd and a joyous shout to the athlete who just stuck a landing, or flipped three or four times across the balance beam, or soared toward the ceiling on a vault before dropping daintily onto the landing mat with no excess motion -- is gone.
Now there isn't exactly perfection in gymnastics.
For the women, on the uneven bars, medal-contending athletes might need a 17.300. On the balance beam maybe the winning score will be 16.850 and on the vault a 16.200. Same for the men. A winner might score 15.000 on the floor but 16.700 on the vault.
"It's a little more confusing for the fans," said Retton, who received two 10s at the 1984 Olympics when she won the all-around title. "And I think the athletes will miss it too."
"I think the fans will miss it," Comaneci said. "There are no comparison points now. It's so hard to define sports like ours and we had something unique. The 10, it was ours first and now you give it away. We created it and our sport should be proud of it.
"The fans had become used to looking toward the scoreboard whenever a gymnast stuck a landing. You could tell they were thinking, 'Was that good enough? Would the numbers read 10.00?' The athlete was looking too."
In a sweet bit of irony, when Comaneci received the first-ever gymnastics perfect 10 at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the scoreboard actually read 1.00.
Daniel Baumat worked for Omega, the Swiss company that made Olympic timing and scoring devices.
Before the Montreal Games, Baumat received an order from FIG, the international gymnastics governing body, for new Olympic scoreboards.
Baumat asked FIG officials if they wanted what they had -- a board with the capability of displaying only three digits such as 9.95, or one that could display four digits such as 10.00.
"I was told, 'A 10.00 is not possible,' " Baumat said. "So we did only three digits."
Comaneci earned that "not possible" score on an uneven bars compulsory routine. In 1976 gymnasts did two routines. The compulsory routine was performed by every gymnast. Gymnasts could also do a second routine of their own choosing and the scores were combined to determine medalists.
