Olympic Nostalgia: Mary Lou Retton
as told to Florence Kane, Vogue
In honor of the upcoming summer games, we caught up with eight former U.S. Olympic champions. In this series, they share their fondest memories of everything it took to win the gold.
The summer Olympics of 1976 were the first games I can remember. I was eight years old and glued to the television set watching this girl, Nadia Comaneci, from a country I'd never heard of, Romania, doing incredible things with her body. It clicked for me. "That's it," I thought. "That's what I want to do." Gymnastics. My mother found a class for me at the university near our town, Fairmont, West Virginia.
See also: Vogue's Guide to Getting Great-Looking Legs
One of the coaches there saw potential in me and, so that I could get more personal attention, opened a little gym in a cleaned-out garage. It's crazy to think that that's where it all began and, not so long after, I made it to the elite level. I was at a competition in Reno, Nevada in 1982 and Bela Karolyi was there with a few of his gymnasts. He had just defected from Romania. I knew who he was, of course: Nadia's coach. He approached me and said, "I will make you an Olympic champion." I probably burst out laughing. I was this fourteen-year-old kid from a Podunk town, but Bela saw something in me. I went home, packed up two bags, and my parents drove me to Houston to start training with him.
Under his and Martha's (his wife) coaching, I won every meet. Pretty quickly, at sixteen, I became one of the top gymnasts, if not the top gymnast in the country-and America's best hope for a medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. We'd won a few in the World Championships, but the summer games had really belonged to the Russians, the Romanians, and the Chinese. Six weeks before the opening ceremonies, I had to have surgery to remove torn cartilage from my knee. Doctors were telling me I wouldn't recover from it in time for L.A. But I wasn't going to live my life wondering, Could I have won? I rehabbed all day for those weeks, even doing the uneven bars with a brace on my leg. Gymnastics is a very short-lived career. I didn't want my chance to disappear.
See also: 100 Under $100 Summer Finds
I knew exactly who my top competitor was going to be: Ecaterina Szabo. I was ready for her. Bela had coached Szabo back in Romania and he told me how similar we were, how strong she was.
It was very disappointing that the other Eastern Bloc countries weren't there because of the boycott. In a display of Cold War politics-a response to the U.S. withdrawing from the Moscow Olympics four years earlier-the USSR and their allies announced they would not participate in L.A. If Russia, East Germany, and others known for their top gymnasts had shown up, might the challenge have been greater? Could the outcome have been different? Of course. But I'd already shown I could beat them at the 1983 American Cup. I was still sad for their athletes, though. The decision ruined a lot of dreams.
See also: Summer Skin Fixes
Szabo and I were neck and neck for the all-around gymnastics gold. She scored a 9.9 on the uneven bars and would have clinched the medal with a ten. To tie, I'd need a 9.95 on the vault. I knew that if I could nail the landing-feet glued to the mat, no stutter step, no hop-I had a chance. I was at the end of the runway, waiting for the judge to give the green light, and thought, "This is it. Everything has led up to the next three seconds." My feet landed, the arms went up, and the whole arena erupted. A ten!
In my day, you got two shots and they used your best score. I didn't have to do the second vault. But I wanted to prove that I didn't just get lucky, that I could do it again. And I did.
More fromVogue:
Angelina Jolie Through the Years in Vogue
Could Your Thyroid Be Making You Depressed?
Vogue Guide: 40 Hot Summer Sandals
Melt-Proof Summer Beauty
