Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton ‘fighting for her life’ with pneumonia
The former star is not insured, her daughter wrote, and asked for donations to help cover her hospital bills.
Mary Lou Retton, the former teenage gymnast who rose to stardom after her gold-medal-winning performance at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, is seriously ill and “fighting for her life,” her daughter McKenna Kelley said in a statement.
Retton has a “rare form of pneumonia” that has made her unable to breathe on her own, according to Kelley. Retton has been in intensive care for over a week. “Out of respect for her and her privacy, I will not disclose all the details,” she added.
The former star is not insured, her daughter wrote, and she asked for donations to help cover the costs of her hospital bills. “We ask that if you could help in any way, that 1) you PRAY! and 2) if you could help us with finances for the hospital.” As of early Wednesday, more than $160,000 had been donated.
Retton, now 55, won five medals at the 1984 Games, including a gold that made her the first American to win an Olympic individual all-round event. Her victories made her “America’s newest darling,” landing her a spot on the Wheaties cereal box and raising the popularity of gymnastics – a sport once dominated by Eastern Europeans – in the United States.
In more recent years, she appeared on “Dancing With the Stars,” a Dairy Queen commercial and an advertisement for Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company, which the company uploaded to YouTube last week. She served as an adviser to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness during the George H.W. Bush administration.
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