YAHOO! SPORTS – Mary Lou Retton, the first American woman to win all-around gymnastics gold at the Olympics, is “fighting for her life” with a serious illness, according to a fundraiser posted by her daughter.
McKenna Lane Kelley said her mother has “a very rare form of pneumonia” and is “not able to breathe on her own.”
She said Retton has been in the ICU for more than a week and is not insured but declined to go into further details.
Proceeds from the fundraiser will reportedly go to Retton’s hospital bills.
Kelley is the second of Retton’s four daughters and was a gymnast herself at LSU from 2016 to 2019.
Retton became an American icon at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where she won all-around gold, plus silver in the team and vault events and bronze in floor exercise and uneven bars.
In addition to being the first all-around gold for an American woman, it was the first by any American competitor since Julius Lenhart in 1904 …
