In July 1976, Nadia Comaneci won the overall gold medal for women's artistic gymnastics at the Montreal Olympics. She also won gold on the beam, gold on asymmetric bars, bronze on floor and a silver medal with her fellow Romanians in the team event. Even more astonishingly, during the five-day competition, she scored a perfect 10 out of 10 seven times - four times on bars, three on beam - an achievement which remains unbeaten to this day. In July 1976, Nadia Comaneci was 14 years old.
It's December 2000, and photographer Zed Nelson and I are wandering around an out-of-town shopping centre outside Glasgow, trying to find a World Cup Final. The International Federation of Gymnastics World Cup Final 1999-2000, no less. You'd think it would be easy to spot, but somehow, among the Sainsbury's and the Salisbury's, the C&A and the M&S, we just can't seem to track the thing down. It's meant to be in an arena and the arena is meant to be near. We check the map, traipse along miles of glinting arcade, our eyes bleeding in the air conditioning. Is the World Cup buried beneath Beaverbrooks? Is it taking place around us, secretly, in the aisles? I start looking carefully at small children in tracksuits, to see if they're gymnasts in disguise. You know how little those Russkies are.
Eventually we spot an arrow stuck to a wall near McDonald's, which we follow to the press area. And finally, we find our World Cup. Through double doors into a bright-lit hall which jumps with silent, wild activity, its floor alive with teeny-tiny people swinging around bars, somersaulting on the beam, screaming along the ground like noiseless Formula Ones before chucking their bantam bodies into the air as though propelled from a car crash. The air boils with energy, but the only sounds are the squeak of the bars, the muffled thud of feet on matted floor.
I start babbling to Zed: 'Look, there's Andreea Raducan, she won the gold but had it taken from her, and see the one with the ponytail, that's Simona Amanar, she won the silver but took the gold, and that one is the Russian who won floor and vault...'
Zed is unimpressed. Our press passes only allow us into the front row of the audience. As far as he is concerned, this is not near enough. It's training day, the only one before the competition, and he was hoping for intimate close-ups. He isn't happy.
As for me, the mere fact of breathing the same recycled air as these athletes has made me quite ecstatic. Imagine how excited you'd be to walk into a church and find Zinadine Zidane, Steve Redgrave and Tiger Woods all hanging out at the altar. That's how this feels for me. I am a big gymnastics fan. During the Sydney Olympics, I set my alarm in order to watch the 5 am shift. I followed every twist and turn, every stumble and fall, and I bored everyone I knew with the drama. So, to have some of the principal players running through that same theatre - in real life! right next to me! - makes me gulp.
Also, I think I'm experiencing my first-ever Proustian rush. This world of French chalk and springboards and sprung floors and crashmats, of stomach strengtheners and stretching exercises and standing on your hands, is familiar yet long-forgotten. From the age of seven until I moved to London at 21, I spent up to three nights a week practising gymnastics. Why, I don't know: I was pretty good at it, but never strong enough to make Stockport, my county team. Though, on one occasion, I trained at Lilleshall, in the national gymnastics centre. I can still remember it: the tumbling floor was so highly sprung, I threw a back somersault from standing.
I gave up at 21, because, well, every gymnast gives up around then. Your body won't do what you tell it any more. Worse, your mind won't tell your body to do it any more. Adulthood brings fear, and gymnastics is impossible if you're afraid. Concentration is essential; consideration - of snapped neck, ripped ears, shattered ankle - spoils everything. When I was 11 and so shortsighted I could barely see my feet, I thought nothing of hurtling at full speed towards a vault that only clicked into focus when I slammed on to the springboard. At 14, I was flinging myself from one uneven bar to another, wrapping my pelvis around a fibreglass pole with no thought for a child-bearing future. Drunk at 17, I'd throw free - no-handed - cartwheels around concrete town centres, chuck flips on park benches, handsprings on dark paths. I was brave. My body was all mine.
Until I left home at 18, I trained at Bramhall High, just south of Manchester. It was just a school sports hall, nothing special, with those long ropes that pulled out from the ceiling and wooden climbing bars on the walls. Every session, we'd set up and take down the equipment; click the asymmetric bars into place, French-chalk them, angle their uprights, tighten the steel ropes; lug out the beam, push the mats underneath, the crashmat at the end; set the vault and springboard; lay the floor, its strips held together with Velcro. I look at the beam in the Glasgow arena, and I know its texture - smooth moleskin wrapped around cold, dense wood. I know its height - 4ft, its width - 4in, I can feel it between my fingers - and I know how heavy it is to carry back into a storeroom. It has 'Continental' stamped on its side. All gymnastic equipment is made by Continental.
A cameraman squeezes past me. He gestures with his head towards a tumbling tot and says: 'Few whiskies and I could do all this.' Except, of course, he couldn't. And neither could I, not even when I trained so hard that gymnastics danced through my dreams. Actually, neither could the all-conquering Nadia Comaneci, at the very height of her powers. If she were to perform her 1976 perfect-10 routines in front of today's judges, she'd be lucky to get above 8.5. Gymnastics has moved on.
I watch the Romanian Andreea Raducan perform a full twisting back somersault on the beam. When Comaneci was Olympic champion, only the top girls could manage such a move on the floor. Raducan did her first triple twist on that apparatus seven years ago. When she was 10. Andreea has grown since, but not much: she's 4ft 7in and weighs 5st. During the Sydney Olympics, a male commentator said, wistfully, 'She has lovely sparkling eyes.' Which she has, and dimples, and a dark, flippy ponytail. She also had the all-around individual Olympic gold medal, Romania's first since Comaneci, for seven whole days, until she was disqualified for failing a drugs test. The Romanian team doctor had prescribed her two Nurofen Cold & Flu tablets for a sniffle; the resulting pseudoephedrine in her urine cost her the gold.
Andreea is a superstar now: after the Olympics, when she arrived home on her 17th birthday, she was welcomed into Bucharest's airport by a crowd of thousands, including Romania's prime minister Mugur Isarescu. She received all the privileges traditionally given by her country for winning an Olympic title - a car, an apartment - plus £20,000, twice the money usually awarded. A jeweller made her a replica medal, out of 18ct gold. Someone wrote 'A Song For Andreea Raducan'. And she became the gymnastics fans' darling, worldwide. Every time she takes a rest near the arena barrier, scores of little girls rush up to ask her for her autograph.
Little girls, little girls: gymnastics' life-blood and its most dedicated disciples. I started gymnastics in its mad post-Korbut heyday, when every girl under ten wanted to be Olga. I was five when she exploded into the 1972 Olympics, scooping gold on floor and beam, silver on bars. Olga Korbut was the first gymnast ever to perform a back somersault on the beam; I wore my hair like her, in two bunches.
In the early to mid-70s, with ambassadors like Korbut and Comaneci, gymnastics was at its popular peak. Even now, when I meet women of my age working in the music business, or in magazines, or PR, or telly, as far from a sporting life as can be imagined, you'd be surprised at how many are ex-gymnasts. We all tried it. Most dropped out, usually in their teenage years; exams took over or boys came along or bodies grew too big, too womanly. The more immature, like me, stuck it out. There was nothing I found that I enjoyed more. Why would I have given up?
By the late 70s, though, the image of gymnastics was suffering. Partly because its greatest legend was suffering, too. In 1978, Nadia Comaneci reappeared, post puberty, a stone heavier and, at 5ft 3in, three-and-a-half inches taller than in 1976. By the end of 1979, she'd lost all her weight and was shockingly gaunt, suffering from a bad wrist and blood poisoning. Articles accused her of bulimia, and the 'gymnastics is bad for your health' rumours started. It stunts your growth. You'll never have babies. The champions are only good because they take steroids.
The 1980 Moscow Olympics saw Nadia win a controversial overall silver. A year later, her coach, Bela Karolyi, defected to the US, and Nadia disappeared from view. Then, in 1989, Nadia suddenly turned up in the States, fat, sluttish, unresponsive. 'See what happens when you stop taking those Eastern European drugs?' crowed the papers.
But she recovered eventually and married Bart Connor, a US gymnast, in 1995. Thousands of well-wishers turned up. Soon after, she was named one of the 100 athletes of the century. Nadia appeared at Andreea Raducan's side during her Sydney appeal: she looked slim, blonde, glamorous. Andreea looked very pale and small.
Today, though, Andreea's perky, chatting to her rivals as she waits for her turn on the bars. She's wearing a black Lycra swimsuit-style leotard and black Lycra shorts. In my day, the fashion was for long sleeves with contrasting V necks, or stripes up the inside of the arm. We wore footless tights, with leg warmers; never shorts.
The only girls in footless tights here are the modern rhythmic gymnasts down the far end, the long-limbed girls with the ball and the ribbon and the hoop, gymnastics' ballet dancers. Zed is photographing them and I go down to join him. He's focusing on one razor-boned poppet who snaps her ribbon with elegant disdain. 'It doesn't take much imagination to have her dressed in leather and turn that into a whip,' he muses.
Gymnasts always score highly in the male fantasy league. It's the bendy sex thing. And also, I think, the fact that you'll never meet a proper gymnast down the pub; and if you did, she wouldn't go out with you, you out-of- condition drunk. Since Comaneci's day, however, sexy gymnasts have become far fewer: Nadia capitalised on the cute acrobat trend started by Korbut, and the womanly, balletic element of gymnastics disappeared after her 1976 triumph, to be replaced by tumbling skills nicked straight from the men. Today's gymnasts are sturdy, and smaller than ever. Russia's pouting Svetlana Khorkina, who recently posed for Playboy , is one of a kind. Whereas once your dad had a choice of curvy beauties to sigh over: Ludmila Tourischeva, Elvira Saadi, Nelli Kim...
Nelli Kim! There she is! Unmistakable, even 26 years on, Eurasian cheekbones, lovely smile, the only true challenge to Comaneci in the late 70s, she's clicking across the arena floor surrounded by elderly women in fur coats. I flick through my programme: Kim is head of judges. The fur-coat brigade must be judges, too: they prod at the beam as though it's an on-sale sofa.
I grab Nelli as she makes her way to the press area. She hasn't got long and, suddenly, I don't know what to say. I ask her about artistry and luckily it gets her going: she talks of lost elegance and beauty and femininity and of gymnastics being 'the grandmother of all sports'. Nelli tells me she lives in Missouri with her 15-year-old daughter; that she judges and coaches and lectures in gymnastics. Occasionally, Nelli performs her old medal-winning routines; in her sleep, in her dreams.
The next day dawns drizzly. Not that we care; we taxi between hotel and out-of-town shopping centre. We never see the weather, or pavements. Several competitors are staying at our hotel, with their coaches and chaperones. I checked out what the gymnasts ate for tea: mostly salmon and salad, though some boys had Yorkshire puddings.
Men's gymnastics has never caught the world's imagination in the way that women's has. Perhaps it's the lack of music for the floor exercises; perhaps it's because they look like they're built for gym, with their super-buff torsos, their over-muscled legs. It's no surprise that they can throw themselves around a bit, is it? Still, there are some stars. At the arena, during warm-up, I hear two teenage girls behind me discuss Gervasio Deferr, the pierced and tattooed Spanish Olympic vault champion.
'Ten out of 10 for the hair,' says one.
'Ten out of 10 for the body,' says the other, and they collapse into giggles.
The atmosphere today is far more serious; even Andreea has stopped smiling. The coaches are more evident, arms folded, ignoring each other, barking instructions. There are few women coaches. And the men, it seems, all have Freddie Mercury moustaches.
The World Cup Final is a two-day event; the last international competition of 2000. The top eight performers on each apparatus are due to compete today, although, post-Olympics, some haven't bothered to show, including Russia's Number One Svetlana Khorkina, who's off taking the Yankee dollar in an exhibition tour across the States.
Romania has brought its two best gymnasts: Andreea, and Simona Amanar, who was made all-around Olympic champion after Andreea's disqualification. Initially, Simona declined her medal, but then took it, 'for Romania'. China's Liu Xuan, bumped up from fourth into third, refused to take hers. Yesterday, I spoke to Octavian Belu, Romanian national coach since Bela Karolyi's 1981 defection, and he said that Andreea, 'a child', had found it hard to have her gold taken from her 'through a stupid error of adult people'.
'Why the small must pay for mistake of big person?' he asked, his arms spread wide.
Andreea still took home one gold medal, for her part in Romania's team win: Belu trains his gymnasts to think of their team first, their individual performance second. Even today, in a specifically individual competition, you notice how supportive the two Romanian girls are of each other.
They both earn their share of whoops from the far-from-capacity crowd. But it's the rhythmic gymnasts who steal the show. When I was young, I turned my nose up at rhythmic gymnastics - not pure enough, the gymnastic equivalent of synchronised swimming - but watching today, I change my mind. The top three girls are very closely matched: all a joy to watch.
The two Russians are gorgeous, too, which helps. Zed is really quite taken with one, Alina Kabaeva, the world's number one. He calls her Chippy, because he thinks she's got a chipmunk face. I prefer the other Russian, Yulia Barsoukova, all angles and haughty expression. Her ball routine is done to the dying-swan music from Swan Lake , and is so technically accomplished that she was asked to perform it before the Bolshoi Ballet. Yesterday, though, we spotted her in her civvies - Puffa jacket, tracksuit bottoms, hair scraped back into straggly ponytail - and this, combined with her razor cheekbones, led us to nickname her (perhaps unfairly) Crack Ho.
Chippy and Cracky hoover up the medals. In the women's artistic competition, Andreea clocks up two golds and a bronze. Her perky charm reminds me of Olga Korbut; her tumbling is more Comaneci. Simona gets two silvers and a bronze. Elena Zamolodtchikova, a Russian who won Olympic gold on vault and floor, does well, too.
But there are more than a few champions who have stayed away - Khorkina, and a couple of other Russians, plus two very talented Chinese girls. There are plenty jostling for top position at the moment. Which might explain gymnastics' dormant popularity. It's renowned as a spectator sport - its seats were some of the quickest to sell out in both Atlanta and Sydney - but in order for it to recapture the news, in order for the little girls to come back in their hordes, it needs a dominant talent. A heroine who can sweep all before her and get the world behind her as she does. An Olga, a Nadia. It nearly had it in the flawed Svetlana Khorkina, but she cracked and fell in Sydney. Perhaps it has it in the tiny, composed form of Andreea Raducan.
I watch her at the post-competition press conference. She is asked, again, about losing her Olympic gold. She answers in her sing-song little girl voice, and Octavian Belu translates. 'Andreea says she nearly to stop to do gym because she don't trust the adult people who made her guilty. But she was very impressed by her support, from the people and from important places, and maybe she get a big help from God to be strong. She don't cry or ask for pity. She says: I want to finish with the nightmare in Sydney,' says her coach. 'She says: I want to show what I am able to do.'
Andreea looks straight ahead as he speaks. Her medals flash under the lights, but her dark-circled eyes are unreadable.