Romania’s search for heroes finds Mississauga tennis star Bianca Andreescu

“I’m not moving. I have to watch this,” the Romanian icon and forever face of the Montreal Olympics said to her family on that Sunday evening. They were spending a few days at their vacation home in Los Angeles and the itinerary for that night wasn’t up for discussion.

The night’s entertainment was provided by a young tennis player from Mississauga. Bianca Andreescu was an unseeded, teenage wild card who had beaten the odds and scrapped her way to the Indian Wells final — the kind of monumental athletic achievement Comaneci could relate to.

As a 14-year-old, Comaneci propelled herself into the cultural mainstream at the 1976 Games in Montreal by becoming the first gymnast in Olympic history to be awarded a perfect 10. She went on to record the immaculate score six more times en route to winning three gold medals that year.

The young girl from Onesti, a small town in the historical region of Western Moldavia, became a global sensation. In the span of a week, she appeared on the covers of Sports Illustrated, Time and Newsweek.

The fact that her success came on Canadian soil means something to her, and is part of the unique connection she feels with a teenager who, 43 years on, is also performing at an astonishing level.

“Must be something in the water in Canada,” Comaneci joked during a phone interview with the Star. Her only direct interaction with Andreescu was in a brief congratulatory Twitter exchange after the final. “It’s a Canadian-Romanian connection.”

Although Andreescu represented Canada when she took the court on that magical night in Indian Wells, when Comaneci watched her newest favourite player triumph over former No. 1 Angelique Kerber to win the title, she was still beaming with Romanian pride.

“We feel proud because she’s one of the Romanian people,” Comaneci said. “Look at the collection of Romanian fans she has, and how she had spoken to her Romanian people in the Romanian language. What does that tell you?”

Andreescu, 18, was born in Ontario to Romanian parents. The family moved back to Pitesti — a large city located along the Arges River and roughly 100 kilometres northwest of Bucharest — during her childhood years, which was when she first picked up a tennis racket at age 7. Just a few years later, they were back in Ontario for good.

The Romanian background and surname were enough for tennis fans in the motherland to follow her journey. But it was what she said after winning her first championship that won the hearts of the country, Comaneci included.

“Thank you, guys, for being with me. I love you.”

It was the moment that reinforced what they knew all along: she’s one of us.

“I was so happy she did that,” Comaneci said, referring to Andreescu’s heartfelt message to Romanians after her victory. “I didn’t know how much Romanian she speaks with her family, but to go back to your roots, you have no idea how much the Romanian people appreciated that.”

The passion for tennis runs deep in the European nation. Former star and ’70s bad boy Ilie Nastase put the country on the map as one of the world’s top players on the men’s circuit during his era. More recently, Simona Halep has been a fixture atop the women’s rankings for the last few years, winning 18 career singles titles and reaching No. 1 in the world twice.

Halep’s success alone has brought women’s tennis to the forefront of the country’s sporting landscape. A major broadcast network in Romania owns the rights for all WTA tournaments, unlike in Canada, where Andreescu’s historic win was nowhere to be found on televisions.

Canada’s two major sports networks only hold the rights to select events when it comes to tennis. TSN has the four Grand Slams and some ATP Tour events while Sportsnet has the Rogers Cup, Davis Cup and Fed Cup. Instead it was DAZN, an upstart sports streaming service, that was the exclusive rights-holder for Andreescu’s final, with 495,000 Canadians reportedly tuning in to the live stream made available free on Twitter.

On the other side of the world, when Andreescu’s emphatic match point came shortly after 2 in the morning, she was front and centre in Romanian homes.

“We the Romanians support everyone that has a Romanian name, even if they represent other countries,” said Luminita Paul, a journalist at Romania’s daily sports newspaper, the Gazeta Sporturilor, who has been covering tennis for 26 years. “We need heroes. We need personalities. We need athletes to look up to, and we don’t have many at this moment.”

Those heroes have been difficult to find in Romania since the Comaneci glory days, which shone a light for a nation during the darkest days of its Communist regime. Halep is the modern-day star for a country that has now settled into a democratic society, but her steady journey to the top is unlike the way Andreescu has jumped out of the gate. Her surge from No. 178 at the end of 2018 to her current rank of No. 23 in the world is uncharted territory.

“Not any Romanian player has done this before. I can assure you, it’s impressive,” said Paul.

Weeks after her remarkable win, the teenager remains the story of the year in Canadian sports. After retiring in the round of 16 because of injury at the Miami Open, Andreescu returned home to a hero’s welcome. In the span of a week, she delivered the game ball for a Toronto FC match, was a special guest of the Raptors and threw a zinger with the ceremonial first pitch for the Blue Jays.

She’s 18, but she’s got star power — and that’s coming from the person who invented it.

“When I was listening to the match they referred to her as the teenage phenomenon,” Comaneci said. “It’s rare that you see people so young, so composed, so dominant in a sport.”

But that’s where Andreescu has found herself. Emerging from the shadows to lead the new wave of Canadian tennis stars along with Denis Shapovalov and Félix Auger-Aliassime.

The difference is that she has 20 million people from a southeastern European country in her corner. Advantage Andreescu.

“I don’t remember ever seeing two flags in the stadium for one person at the same time,” Comaneci said. “It’s amazing how sport can connect people together.”

According to a 2016 census from Statistics Canada, more than 90,000 Romanian immigrants have settled here, nearly 80 per cent of them in Ontario or Quebec. The majority live in Montreal — another sign of the legacy a legendary gymnast left behind.

Comaneci now travels the world delivering motivational speeches with her husband, former American Olympic gymnast Bart Conner. She will meet Andreescu formally in August at the Aurora Games in Albany, N.Y., where she hopes to use their shared mother tongue to chat about what it’s like to be a teen thrust in the spotlight.

In the meantime, she’ll continue watching from afar — no matter what time it is.

“I told my husband, until now there was only one player that I was waking up at 2 or 3 a.m. to watch live tennis because of the time difference. And that was Simona,” Comaneci said. “Now I have one more.

“Her name is Bianca.”