Barthold Wayne CONNER

Bart Conner competed at the 1976 Olympics when he was just out of high school. He was on the US team at the 1975 Pan American Games, winning a team all-around gold medal and bronze medals on floor and rings. Conner attended the University of Oklahoma, where he was a multiple All-American, graduating in 1984, and received the 1981 Nissen Award as the nation’s top gymnast. In 1979 Conner won the parallel bars gold medal at the World Championships, adding a bronze medal on vault and with the team. He also made the ill-fated 1980 US Olympic team, although an injury made it unlikely he would have been at his best.

Conner continued to compete through the 1984 Olympics but was never again at his best because of injuries, including a torn bicep that almost forced him to miss the 1984 Olympic Trials. He came through in Los Angeles with a gold medal on parallel bars, his best event, where he did a one-hand handstand which was named for him, the Conner Spin. He also placed sixth in all-around.

In 1991, after the fall of Communism in Romania, Nadia Comăneci escaped that country and came to the United States where she and Conner re-connected. They became engaged in November 1994 and married in Bucureşti, Romania on 27 April 1996. Conner and Comăneci are still strongly involved in gymnastics, with the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy, Perfect 10 Production Company, sports equipment shops, and they edit International Gymnast magazine. They also do speaking engagements and charity work.