Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic gymnastics champion, has battling for her life in a Texas hospital with pneumonia and is in intensive care.
McKenna Kelley, the daughter of Retton, shared on Tuesday the recent condition of Mary Lou Retton on her Instagram story. Kelley said her mother, 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.
She began a fundraising campaign on Retton’s behalf for medical expenses. Kelley also wrote that Retton does not currently have medical insurance.
Retton was 16 years old when she became an iconic figure 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 bagged 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, presently lives in Texas. She retired from competitive gymnastics in 1986 and did considerable commercial endorsements. She also made several film and television appearances, including a stint on “Dancing with the Stars.”
She and her husband, Shannon Kelley, divorced in 2018.
