Nadia Comaneci
Nadia Elena Comaneci is a Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the first female gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. She also won two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. She is one of the best-known gymnasts in the world. In 2000 Comaneci was named as one of the athletes of the century by the Laureus World Sports Academy.
Nadia Comaneci was born in Romania in 1961, but in 1989 she fled the country and went to the USA, where she was granted asylum. The land she fled at the age of 28 was governed by a Communist dictator, President Nicolae Ceauşescu, who combined the brute oppression of Stalin's U.S.S.R. with the maniacal terrorism of Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti. Having arrived at JFK Airport in 1989 Nadia Comaneci spoke in a soft voice, audible only to those near her, and said she had first thought of leaving her homeland "a long time ago—a few years ago—because I like life. I want to have a free life."
Sources: http://si.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1069206/index.htm,
http://news.in.msn.com/gallery/photoviewer.aspx?cp-documentid=5221656&page=9,