Former Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton arrives for the Fanatics Super Bowl Party at Ballroom at Bayou Place in Houston on Feb. 4, 2017. (Robin Marchant/Getty Images for Fanatics)
Olympic gymnastics champion Mary Lou Retton has pneumonia and is in intensive care in a Texas hospital.
Retton’s daughter, McKenna Kelley, shared Ms. Retton’s condition in an Instagram post on Tuesday. Ms. Kelley said 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.
Ms. Kelley started a fundraising campaign on Ms. Retton’s behalf for medical expenses. Ms. Kelley wrote that Ms. Retton does not currently have medical insurance.
Ms. 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. Ms. 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 United States.
Ms. Retton, a mother of four, currently lives in Texas.
Mary Lou Retton reacts to applause after her performance at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles on Aug. 3, 1984. (Suzanne Vlamis/AP Photo)
