Perfect 10 (gymnastics)

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.^[1][2] 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.^[3][4] (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.