One circumstance to send journalists scrambling is the sudden discovery that a person of significant accomplishment is seriously ill at a relatively young age. Mary Lou Retton, the 1984 Olympic gymnastics champion who became a household name at 16, is now only 55, but when her daughter announced that Retton was “fighting for her life” against a rare form of pneumonia, the need to prepare a public account of Retton’s life took on great urgency.
It is one thing when superstars and politicians creep into their 70s and 80s and it becomes due diligence to cobble together a chronicle of their unique place in the parade of humanity. As a major newspaper editor once put it, “You would not want to write Hugh Hefner’s obituary on deadline.”
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Which is why pre-written obituaries are common in the news business, often supplemented with an interview of the not-yet-departed while he or she is still with us. Organizations such as the Associated Press, aware of average life-expectancy statistics, have hundreds of obits ready on Known People of a certain vintage, including the most prominent members of the Royal Family and the two living Beatles. The New York Daily News’ obituary of Rosa Park, published upon her death at 92 in 2005, had been written more than decade earlier.
But the other scenario is the unanticipated fatality—John Kennedy, Jr., or Princess Diana, as examples—that leaves news outlets frantically piecing together life-story details for swift publication. And here was Retton, something of a sports/marketing giant (though she is only 4-foot-9), abruptly becoming a candidate for a gone-but-not-forgotten review.
Retton’s star turn was brief but of considerable consequence. Her gold medal victory at the ’84 Los Angeles Games was the first by an American female in the Olympic gymnastics all-around individual competition—her sport’s glamor event. That landed her image on boxes of Wheaties, the self-proclaimed “Breakfast of Champions” that had been similarly featuring sports superstars for 50 years. But, before Retton, only men.
Her lightning strike on American gymnastics inspired waves of young girls to take up the sport and eventually led to U.S. women owning the event for the past five Olympics. Previous to Retton, in the eight Olympics in which women’s gymnastics had been contested, competitors from Eastern bloc nations won every all-around gold.
It didn’t hurt Retton that the old Soviet Union, whose athletes had won five of those earlier titles, had boycotted the L.A. Games amid Cold War tensions. And Retton’s impact was boosted by the fact that more than 180 million Americans watched at least part of the ’84 Olympics on TV, precipitating bidding wars among networks for future Olympic rights.
Whatever. Retton’s rollicking Olympic success established her as a boldface name, a cultural figure, in part because she didn’t quite fit the norm. Women’s gymnastics already had evolved into a showplace for girls in their tweens, acrobatic little tykes with nerves of steel.
Retton had been animated by watching the Olympic perfection, eight years earlier, of Romania’s Nadia Comaneci, and her only evidence of anxiousness regarding the dangers of derring-do gym routines was that she bit her nails. But it was Retton’s coach, Romanian defector Bela Karolyi—who had burst onto the international scene as Comaneci’s coach—who identified an evolution in Retton’s style. “You’re not a butterfly,” he told her.
Though only 94 pounds, Retton was built more for strength than speed. Rather than trafficking in the traditional stringy gymnastic grace, she commanded the spotlight with flash more than frills. She was described by USA Today’s veteran Olympic reporter Christine Brennan as “an ever-smiling 16-year-old tomboy, a tiny fullback in a gymnast’s leotard.”
Plus, she was a quick study, making her first big splash at New York’s Madison Square Garden a year before the Olympics by scoring a perfect 10 with a floor exercise introduced to her by Karolyi just five days earlier. She won her Olympic gold a mere five weeks after undergoing arthroscopic surgery for torn knee cartilage.
She retired from the sport just two years later but remained a spokeswoman for various products, a motivational speaker and a recognizable personality on various TV shows. She married, had four children and divorced. She forever was in demand for public recollections of those ’84 Olympics, calling herself “the old pioneer,” and for years topped polls establishing her as the public’s favorite athlete.
There was this moment midway through 1984 L.A. Games when Retton wandered into a newsstand and was flabbergasted by how sprinter/long jumper Carl Lewis, who won four gold medals in track and field, seemed to have become the face of those Olympics. “Gol-lee!” she exclaimed. “Carl Lewis is on the cover of both Time and Newsweek!” By the end of the 17-day festival, she had joined him. And become “America’s Sweetheart.”
Just days after October 2023 reports that Retton was “fighting for her life” came news that she was showing “remarkable progress” in her recovery. So no need for that obituary yet. And while no one gets to write his or her own ending, Retton long ago provided plenty of background for news hounds.