Mary Lou Retton

Mary Lou Retton, born January 24, 1968, in Fairmont, West Virginia, is a former American gymnast. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, she took home the gold in the individual all-around, plus silver in the vault and bronze in the floor exercise. That performance earned her the Sports Illustrated Sportswoman of the Year award and made her a household name across the United States. Her all-around victory was a first for any American woman in Olympic gymnastics.

Her father, Ronnie, ran a business supplying equipment to the coal industry. Retton attended Fairmont Senior High School but didn’t graduate; she was still a sophomore when she competed in the 1984 Games.

Retton got into gymnastics at age eight after watching Nadia Comăneci beat Olga Korbut on TV during the 1976 Montreal Olympics. She started training in Fairmont under coach Gary Rafaloski. Her family later moved to Houston, Texas, so she could work with Romanian coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi, who had trained Comăneci before defecting to the U.S. Under the Károlyis, Retton won the American Cup in 1983 and placed second to fellow Károlyi student Dianne Durham at the U.S. Nationals that year. A wrist injury kept her out of the 1983 World Championships, but she won the American Classic in 1983 and 1984, as well as Japan’s Chunichi Cup in 1983.

In 1984, after winning a second American Cup, the U.S. Nationals, and the Olympic Trials, Retton hurt her knee during a floor routine at a local gym. While sitting to sign autographs, her knee locked up, requiring surgery just five weeks before the Los Angeles Olympics—the first Summer Games held in the U.S. in 52 years. She recovered in time for the competition, which was boycotted by Soviet bloc nations except Romania. There, she battled Romania’s Ecaterina Szabo for the all-around gold. Trailing Szabo by 0.15 after uneven bars and balance beam, Retton scored perfect 10s on floor exercise and vault—the last event especially dramatic given concerns about her knee. She won the all-around gold by 0.05 points, becoming the first female gymnast from outside Eastern Europe to claim the individual all-around title. She also became the first American woman to be Olympic all-around champion, a distinction she held alone until the U.S.