Gymnastics legend Mary Lou Retton in intensive care with pneumonia
ASSOCIATED PRESS / 1984
Mary Lou Retton, of the United States, performs on the balance beam during the women’s gymnastics individual all-around finals at the Summer Olympics on Aug. 3, 1984, in Los Angeles. Retton. 55, is in intensive care in a Texas hospital fighting a rare form of pneumonia, according to her daughter McKenna Kelley.
Olympic gymnastics champion Mary Lou Retton has pneumonia and is in intensive care in a Texas hospital.
Retton’s daughter, McKenna Kelley, shared Retton’s condition in an Instagram post on Tuesday. Kelley said the 55-year-old Retton, who became the first American woman to win the Olympic all-around title, is “fighting for her life” and not able to breathe on her own.
Kelley started a fundraising campaign on Retton’s behalf for medical expenses. Kelley wrote that Retton does not currently have medical insurance.
Retton was 16 years old when she became an icon of the U.S. Olympic movement during her gold medal-winning performance at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Retton, who grew up in Fairmont, West Virginia, also won two silver and two bronze medals at those Olympics to help bring gymnastics — a sport long dominated by eastern European powers like Romania and the Soviet Union — into the mainstream in the U.S.
Retton, a mother of four, currently lives in Texas.
