Houston Sports - Mary Lou Retton (& 400,000)

Mary Lou Retton

Born: January 24, 1968

Sport: Gymnastics (5-time Olympic medalist: 1 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze, Hall of Fame) 

On February 1 of last year I celebrated reaching 200k views on this website.  Last October the counter hit 300k.  And now, just four months later, it's notched another milestone at 400,000.  That's such an incredible thing to realize, and I am continually humbled and grateful for each individual who takes the time to check out what's going on here.  I can't believe this modest blog is starting the countdown to half a million!  It's very cool - thank you to all you readers out there!  This week, as the Milan Cortina games move into the second half of their schedule, we're going to look at the story of an Olympian who adopted Houston as her home and became one of the city's most decorated athletes in a very short time.  And that gymnast, Mary Lou Retton, also happened to go to the same church I did for a period of time and attended Sunday school with my parents.  So let's find out more about the young lady who became known as America's Sweetheart. 

The Karolyi Ranch near Houston, where Mary Lou Retton trained for the 1984 Olympics

In 1968, Mary Lou Retton was born as the fifth and final child of Ronnie and Lois Retton.  The town of Fairmont, West Virginia, may have been quite small with a population of less than 30,000, but that was large enough to place it within the top 10 cities in the state.  Ronnie had been a star baseball and basketball player at the nearby University of West Virginia, when he and the Mountaineers made it all the way to the 1959 NCAA Tournament championship game but lost to the University of California by a single point.  He had a professional baseball career but retired after six seasons in the minor leagues before settling with Lois in Fairmont and starting a coal mining equipment company.  Mary Lou was just eight years old when she became fascinated with gymnastics while watching Nadia Comaneci's masterful performance in the 1976 Olympics.  Her parents were supportive and had her train in acrobatics under the instruction of a local coach.  Retton's talent was obvious but so was the fact that it could not be fully developed in Fairmont.  The Olympic coaches of Comaneci, Bela and Marta Karolyi, had defected from Soviet-controlled Romania and opened a gymnastics training center in the Houston area, and so the Rettons decided to move their family to Texas.  Mary Lou was just 14 years of age but was already in position to get the best training available anywhere in the world. 

Mary Lou Retton started training at the Karolyi Gym in the early 80s, focusing on international competition in a style that matched her small but powerful frame.  Standing just 4' 9", Retton won the 1983 American Cup for her first major tournament victory.  After placing second to teammate Dianne Durham in the US Nationals a wrist injury cost her a chance at that year's World Gymnastics Championships, but she came back strong in 1984 to claim first in the American Cup and US Nationals.  She was considered a top contender for the Olympics but a knee injury nearly derailed her quest.  Retton had arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn cartilage just six weeks before the games began in Los Angeles, enduring a rapid rehabilitation to get her ready to compete.  During the competition, which was boycotted by all Soviet nations except Romania, Retton was locked in a tight contest halfway through the four event rotations against the favorite, Romanian Ecaterina Szabo.  Dubbed "the next Nadia", Szabo held a slight advantage and appeared poised to win the gold all-around medal.  Retton stunned the world with perfect 10 scores on both the vault and the floor exercise, however, and edged her rival by 0.05 points.  Although the Romanians claimed the team competition gold and Szabo rebounded with three individual event gold medals, Retton's victory was monumental as it was the first time a non-European woman claimed the title as all-around Olympic champion.  The Americans took the team competition silver and Retton polished off her Olympic journey by winning a silver medal in the vault and bronze medals in floor exercise and uneven bars.  She was an instant star, becoming the first female to grace the front of a Wheaties box, and her five gymnastics medals in a single Olympic year set an American record that wouldn't be touched until 2008.

After the 1984 Olympics ended, Mary Lou Retton competed in the 1985 American Cup, winning for the third time, and then announced her retirement from competitive gymnastics.  Still just 18 she settled in Houston, completed high school by correspondence, and chose to attend the University of Texas.  Retton had met Ronald and Nancy Reagan after the Olympics and leveraged her celebrity status to support his reelection campaign for several months.  In 1990 she married former Longhorns QB Shannon Kelley, with whom she would have four daughters, and the pair even lived in her native West Virginia for a period of time while he worked at Fairmont State University before returning to Texas in 2012.  Retton became involved in endorsements and public speaking for a time, but medical issues also arose.  She discovered that she had been born with hip dysplasia which, combined with the wear and tear of gymnastics, resulted in total hip replacement.  Retton revealed that she'd had nearly 20 surgeries over the years related to injuries and a degenerative bone disease.  In 2023 one of her daughters announced that Retton had been admitted to the hospital with a form of pneumonia that left her unable to breathe on her own for a period of time.  She did recover, however, and was able to return home within days.  Among the honors Retton had received are being named Sports Illustrated's Sportswoman of the Year, the American Academy of Achievement's Gold Plate Award, and induction in the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame (1993), International Gymnastics Hall of Fame (1997), and the Houston Sports Hall of Fame (2020) - the first female so honored. 

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