Fifty years after Nadia Comaneci’s 10, athletes are still chasing perfection

“Perfection is a theory,” the legendary dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said and yet, like all athletes, his life was devoted to pursuing it. Perhaps perfection can’t be held, but it can be occasionally touched, flirted with and inched close enough to some days to believe in its existence.

Ask Max Lee, a SEA Games silver medallist who falls artistically towards water from 10m, and there is no question.