A perfect 10 is a score of 10.000 for a single routine in artistic gymnastics, which was once thought to be unattainable—particularly at the Olympic Games—under the code of points set by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). It is generally recognized that the first person to score a perfect 10 at the Olympic Games was Romanian Nadia Comăneci, at the 1976 Games in Montreal. Other women who accomplished this feat at the Olympics include Nellie Kim, also in 1976, Mary Lou Retton in 1984, Daniela Silivaș and Yelena Shushunova in 1988, Lu Li and Lavinia Miloșovici in 1992. The first man to score a perfect 10 is considered to be Alexander Dityatin, at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. (However, in the 1924 Paris Olympics, 22 men achieved a mark of 10 in rope-climbing, with Albert Séguin getting a second 10 in the sidehorse vault, events that are no longer part of artistic gymnastics.)
The FIG changed its code of points in 2006. There are now different top scores, all greater than 10, for the various events, based upon difficulty and artistic merit; there is no consistent perfect score. Execution scores are still out of 10, so the theoretical possibility exists for a gymnast to get a partial "perfect 10" (for execution) in addition to whatever maximum number they get for difficulty, but no such score has been awarded in decades.
History Men's artistic gymnastics had been an Olympic sport since the beginning of the modern games. Women's gymnastics were introduced as a single (team) event in the 1928 games, but were not expanded until the 1952 games, when there were seven events.
The International Federation of Gymnastics first drew up a code of points—for men—in 1949. Although the code was based on a maximum score of 10, until 1976 it was considered impossible to achieve a score of greater than 9.95, particularly at the Olympic Games. At the World Championships or Olympics, from when increased standardization of competition format and scoring (which was capped at a 10, a trend which would not be changed until 2006) was introduced at the 1952 Olympics, the very highest scores tended to be in the 9.400 – 9.600 range, and over the next few World and Olympic cycles through the 1950, 1960s, and 1970s, the top scores gradually got higher through the 9.700 and 9.800 range.
During the post-1952 era, a couple of very early scores, essentially extreme outliers, that came very close to the 10 mark were Armenian-Soviet Hrant Shahinyan's 9.950 on optional rings at the 1952 Olympics and Armenian-Soviet Albert Azaryan's 9.950, also on the optional still rings exercise, at the 1954 World Championships. On the men's side, these scores might not have been surpassed, or even equaled, at a World Championships or Olympics until 1980, as even scores of 9.900 were extremely rare and, in some Worlds and Olympics throughout the 1950s–1970s, scores of 9.900 seem to have been non-existent for the men.
One early example of a woman gymnast breaking 9.900 at a World Championships or Olympics in the post-1952 era was Soviet Larisa Latynina at the 1962 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships with a score of 9.933. Soviet Zinaida Druzhinina-Voronina also scored a 9.933, at the 1966 World Championships in the floor exercise finals.
Věra Čáslavská of Czechoslovakia was the first gymnast to achieve perfect 10s at a major competition in the post-1952 era, which she did twice at the 1967 European Championships, which were displayed on a manual scoreboard.
Prior to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Omega, the official timers, asked the International Olympic Committee how many digits it should allow on the electronic scoreboard, and were told that three digits would be sufficient, as a score of 10.00 would not be possible. On 18 July 1976, however, 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci scored a 10 on the uneven bars. Because the scoreboard was limited to three digits, it displayed her score as 1.00. This led to confusion, with even Comăneci unsure of what it meant, until the announcer informed the elated crowd that she had scored a perfect 10. An iconic press photograph (see above) shows a beaming Comăneci, arms upraised, beside the scoreboard. Comăneci scored a total of seven 10s at the 1976 Olympics—four on the uneven bars and three on the balance beam. Her main rival, the Soviet Union's Nelli Kim, scored two 10s in the same competition, in the vault and floor exercise. Comăneci's coach, Béla Károlyi, having defected to the United States in 1981, subsequently coached American Mary Lou Retton to gold at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, where she scored 10s in the vault and floor exercise.
The first man to score a perfect 10 in Olympic competition was the Soviet Alexander Dityatin, in the vault, on the way to a record-breaking eight medals in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Among other men to achieve the score was Comăneci's future husband, Bart Conner, who achieved two 10s in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Change in scoring The code of points came under review as a result of separate incidents during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, in which gymnasts were believed to have received excessively low scores. A new scoring system was introduced in 2006. It consists of an "A" score, based on the difficulty of elements, and a "B" score, based on artistic impression. While the B score still has a maximum of 10, it is only a part of the overall score.
The change had its share of critics. Béla Károlyi said of it: "It's crazy, terrible, the stupidest thing that ever happened to the sport of gymnastics.". Mary Lou Retton remarked: "It's hard to understand. I don't even understand it." Nadia Comăneci commented, "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."
List of perfect 10s
Olympics
Paris 1924 Twenty-two men in rope-climbing, with Albert Séguin getting a second 10.0 in the sidehorse vault
Montreal 1976
Women
Nadia Comăneci – team compulsory uneven bars, team optional uneven bars, team optional balance beam, all around uneven bars, all around balance beam, uneven bars event final, balance beam event final Nellie Kim – all around vault, floor exercise event final
(Olympic database; Women's individual results; women's all-around results; women's team results)
Moscow 1980
Men
Alexander Dityatin – all around vault Stoyan Deltchev – all around rings Aleksandr Tkachyov – all around high bar Michael Nikolay – all around pommel horse Zoltán Magyar – all around pommel horse, pommel horse event final
(Men's all-around results; men's individual event results)
Women
Natalia Shaposhnikova – team compulsory vault Yelena Davydova – team optional floor exercise Emilia Eberle – team optional uneven bars Nadia Comăneci – team compulsory balance beam, all around uneven bars Melita Ruhn – team optional vault Maxi Gnauck – team optional uneven bars
Los Angeles 1984
Men
Peter Vidmar – team compulsory pommel horse, all around high bar, pommel horse event final Bart Conner – team optional parallel bars, parallel bars event final Mitch Gaylord – team compulsory parallel bars, team optional rings Tim Daggett – team optional high bar Li Ning – team compulsory pommel horse, team optional rings, floor exercise event final, pommel horse event final Tong Fei – team compulsory high bar, team optional rings, all around high bar, high bar event final Xu Zhiqiang – team compulsory high bar Lou Yun – team compulsory vault, team optional vault Li Xiaoping – team compulsory pommel horse Koji Gushiken – team compulsory high bar, all around vault, high bar event final Shinji Morisue – team compulsory high bar, team optional high bar, high bar event final Nobuyuki Kajitani – parallel bars event final
Women
Ecaterina Szabo – team compulsory floor exercise, team optional vault, all around balance beam, floor exercise event final Simona Păucă – team optional balance beam Mary Lou Retton – team optional vault, all around vault, all around floor exercise Julianne McNamara – team optional uneven bars, team optional floor exercise, all around uneven bars, uneven bars event final, floor exercise event final Ma Yanhong – team optional uneven bars, all around uneven bars, uneven bars event final
(Men's results; women's results)
Seoul 1988
Men
Vladimir Artemov – team compulsory parallel bars, team optional high bar, all around parallel bars, all around high bar Valeri Liukin – team optional pommel horse, team optional parallel bars, all around high bar Dmitry Bilozerchev – team optional pommel horse, team optional rings, all around pommel horse, all around rings, all around vault, pommel horse event final Sergei Kharkov – team optional floor exercise Koichi Mizushima – team optional pommel horse Daisuke Nishikawa – team optional pommel horse Lubomir Geraskov – team optional pommel horse, pommel horse event final Zsolt Borkai – team optional pommel horse, pommel horse event final Holger Behrendt – team optional rings Sylvio Kroll – all around pommel horse György Guczoghy – all around pommel horse Csaba Fajkusz – all around high bar
Women
Yelena Shushunova – team compulsory vault, team optional vault, team optional uneven bars, team optional floor exercise, all around vault, all around floor exercise, uneven bars event final Daniela Silivaș – team compulsory uneven bars, team compulsory floor exercise, team optionals uneven bars, team optionals balance beam, all around uneven bars, all around floor exercise, uneven bars event final Dagmar Kersten – team compulsory uneven bars, uneven bars event final
(Men's results; women's results)
Barcelona 1992
Women
Lu Li – uneven bars event final Lavinia Miloșovici – floor exercise event final
(Women's results)
Alternate Olympics
Olomouc 1984
Men
Dmitry Bilozerchev – team optional pommel horse, team optional rings, team optional parallel bars, team optional high bar, all around pommel horse, all around vault, all around parallel bars, all around high bar, pommel horse event final, rings event final, high bar event final Vladimir Artemov – team optional pommel horse, team optional rings, team optional vault, all around rings Yuri Balabanov – team compulsory rings, team optional high bar, all around parallel bars Holger Behrendt – team optional rings Sylvio Kroll – team compulsory vault, team optional vault, vault event final Roland Brückner – team optional floor exercise
Women
Olga Mostepanova – team compulsory vault, team compulsory uneven bars, team compulsory balance beam, team optional vault, team optional balance beam, team optional floor exercise, all around vault, all around uneven bars, all around balance beam, all around floor exercise, balance beam event final, floor exercise event final Natalia Yurchenko – team compulsory uneven bars, team optional vault, all around vault, all around balance beam, uneven bars event final Yelena Shushunova – team optional vault Maxi Gnauck – team compulsory uneven bars, team optional vault, team optional uneven bars, all around floor exercise, uneven bars event final, floor exercise event final Gabriele Fähnrich – team compulsory uneven bars, uneven bars event final Hana Říčná – team optional balance beam, all around vault, all around uneven bars Martina Koblizkova – team optional vault Alena Dřevjaná – all around balance beam Franka Voigt – all around vault Boriana Stoyanova – all around uneven bars Miroslava Koblizkova – all around uneven bars
Goodwill Games
1986 Goodwill Games
Women Yelena Shushunova – all around vault Oksana Omelianchik – all around floor exercise
1990 Goodwill Games
Women
Natalia Kalinina – all around floor exercise
Men
Vitali Scherbo – vault 2, apparatus finals
World Championships
1934 World Championships
Eugen Mack – vault (perfect 20 out of 20)
1950 World Championships
Hans Eugster – compulsory parallel bars