The gymnastics champion sprang to stardom at the 1984 Olympics, where she became the first American woman to win a gold medal in the all-around competition. Her family is raising money online, saying she lacks health insurance.
May Lou Retton at the 1984 Olympics, where she won five medals.
Mary Lou Retton, who became one of the most popular athletes in the country after winning the all-around women’s gymnastics competition at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, has pneumonia and is “fighting for her life” in the intensive care unit, her daughter said in a statement this week.
Retton’s daughter McKenna Lane Kelley said on Instagram that her mother “is not able to breathe on her own” and that she had been in the intensive care unit for more than a week.
Kelley asked for donations to help pay for her mother’s hospital bills, saying her mother lacked health insurance. By Wednesday, she had raised more than $260,000 online from more than 4,600 donors.
She did not share more specific information about her mother’s condition, though she said that her pneumonia was “a very rare form.” It was not clear what hospital Retton was in.
Kelley, who was a gymnast at Louisiana State University, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, another daughter, Shayla Kelley Schrepfer, released a video on Instagram thanking people for “all the love and support that you’ve given to my mom.”
“She’s still fighting,” Schrepfer said. “It’s going to be a day-by-day process, and we hope that you guys will respect her boundaries, as we want to keep the details between her and our family right now. She has been treated with the best of the best professionals here, and it has been such a blessing to have their hands on her.”
At the 1984 Olympics, Retton became the first American woman to win the all-around gold medal or any individual Olympic medal in gymnastics. Going into the final rotation of the competition, she was five-hundredths of a point behind Romania’s Ecaterina Szabo, and the only way she could beat Szabo was to score a perfect 10 on vault.
Retton scored a perfect 10.
She won five medals in Los Angeles, including two silvers, for team and vault, and two bronzes, for uneven bars and floor exercise.
Though there was an asterisk by Retton’s victory in the history books — the Soviet Union, which was the most dominant force in women’s gymnastics at the time, boycotted the 1984 Games — it nonetheless made her a sports hero in the United States. In addition to earning her the traditional trappings of Olympic gold, like appearing on a Wheaties box, she was widely viewed as an inspiration to a new generation of American girls entering gymnastics.
Even as the American gymnastics program grew and the country won more medals, including the team gold in 1996, Retton’s prominence remained: For 20 years, Retton, now 55, was the only American woman to win the all-around title, until Carly Patterson became the second in 2004.
Retton was born in Fairmont, W.Va., and got her start early, like many top gymnasts. By the time Retton was 7 years old, she was training in gymnastics full-time.
Retton’s talent had been apparent from the start, but a big break came at an Olympics elimination tournament in Reno, Nev., in 1982, where she impressed Bela Karolyi, who would go on to coach her in the 1984 Olympics.
“I immediately recognized the tremendous physical potential of this little kid,” Karolyi said in a March 1984 interview.
Retton appeared in a number of films and TV shows in the late 1980s and 1990s, including the comedy film “Scrooged.”
After her athletic career, Retton became a motivational speaker to promote the benefits of proper nutrition and regular exercise.
Otherworldly Revelation – Mexican Authorities Unveil Two Mysterious Beings at Public Hearing
The existence of aliens, which is frequently the subject of conjecture and science fiction, is nevertheless a fascinating subject of discussion. But can the enigmatic findings made public during a recent court in Mexico provide a definitive response to the long-standing query? There’s no denying that the fascinating creatures have captivated the interest and stoked the imagination of people worldwide.
Two unidentified beings were discovered in Peru in 2017.
In reality, the enigmatic bones that were shown before a formal tribunal in Mexico were found many years ago. 2017 saw the discovery of exceptionally well-preserved mummies buried far beneath the sandy Nazca coastal desert in Peru. The area is well-known for its enigmatic enormous earth figures, which are typically credited to native American tribes. However, some believe they could be the creation of extraterrestrials.
A few years later, Mexico hosted its first hearing over the alleged “alien bodies.”
During a congressional session on aliens, Mexican legislators were recently provided with astounding evidence, six years after the unusual finding in Peru. The testimony pointed to the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and Mexican writer and UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan showed them two objects he claimed to be the bones of non-human animals. On September 12, a momentous occasion occurred that marked Mexico’s first formal discussion on the subject of aliens.
Maussan claimed that these specimens showed no ties to the planet. Two tiny “bodies” with elongated heads and three fingers on each hand were enclosed for exhibition. He claimed that they were around a millennium old, based on a carbon dating analysis that the National Autonomous University of Mexico had carried out.
Despite the interesting appearance of the results, several scientists remain skeptical about their alien origins.
Julieta Fierro, a researcher from the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Astronomy, explained that their university had not endorsed the alleged discovery, in contrary to Jaime Maussan’s claims. She stressed that in order to determine whether the calcified bodies in issue could indeed be classified as “non-human,” scientists would need to use more sophisticated technology than X-rays.
Similarly, Jordan Brimm, a professor from Chicago, questions whether the findings are real. It turns out that the self-described ufologist Maussan has made unfounded assertions in the past regarding the existence of aliens.
It remains to be seen whether the mummies are in fact aliens, but one thing is certain: there are still many unanswered questions about our planet. A few months earlier, many people were similarly perplexed by another unexpected occurrence in the sky.
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