HOUSTON — A daughter of Olympic gymnastics champion Mary Lou Retton says she has been released from the hospital and is now recovering at home from a battle with rare form of pneumonia.
McKenna Kelly, one of Retton’s four daughters, wrote on Instagram that “Mom is HOME & in recovery mode. We still have a long road of recovery ahead of us, but baby steps.”
Retton was earlier was said to be “fighting for her life” in an intensive care unit at a Texas hospital. It was reported that she was unable to breathe on her own.
Retton, 55, became the first American female gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Donations have poured into a fundraiser the family set up to help offset Retton’s medical expenses after the family said she didn’t have medical insurance.
“We are overwhelmed by the love and support from everyone,” Kelly’s Instagram post continues. “Grateful doesn’t scrape the surface of the posture of our hearts.”
An earlier Instagram post from Kelly said Retton’s “progress is truly remarkable.”
However, an Instagram post from a few days ago by Shayla Kelley Schrepfer, another of Retton’s daughters, said Retton recently suffered a “scary setback.”
Retton was 16 when she became an icon of the U.S. Olympic movement during her gold medal-winning performance at the 1984 Summer Games. The native of 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 U.S.
