This was the last gasp of amateurism at the Olympics.
Most of the nations who’d already made a sham of the ideal stayed away, the Soviet-bloc boycott of the 1984 Games of Los Angeles allowing the rest of the world to gather one last time under the Games’ original ideology, unburdened by the state-sponsored automatons of Moscow and East Berlin and Prague.
By 1988, those countries would be back.
By ’92, everyone else — starting with the U.S. jumping in gleefully with both feet — would welcome professionals, too.
But in ’84, it was still possible for an athlete to craft a legend for themselves across a glorious fortnight, plus two.
And those 16 days in LA yielded a solar system of American superstars — Edwin Moses, Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan, Greg Louganis, Joan Benoit.
None stood taller, shone brighter, than a 4-foot-11, 100-pound dynamo named Mary Lou Retton.
All across 1984, some of the greatest athletes we’d ever see were at the top of their games.
Wayne Gretzky won his first Stanley Cup.
Jordan won gold, then brought immediate star power to an NBA that, in June, had enjoyed record ratings thanks to a Larry Bird/Magic Johnson Finals.
Doc Gooden landed out of the sky, struck out the world. Joe Montana and Dan Marino led teams that would reach the Super Bowl in January.
John McEnroe won two majors.
Martina Navratilova went 78-2. Golf’s four majors were won by four Hall of Famers: Ben Crenshaw, Fuzzy Zoeller, Seve Ballesteros, Lee Trevino.
Mary Lou was bigger than any of them.
She’d come to LA fresh off knee surgery five weeks before.
She was America’s best hope to win gold in the all-around gymnastics competition held at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, but the one holdout from the Communist boycott was Romania, long the sport’s powerhouse.
With one rotation left, Retton trailed Romanian Ecaterina Szabo by 0.05.
As she walked to the vault, Retton passed by her personal coach, Bela Karolyi.
“You need a 10,” he said stoically.
She delivered a 10.
So flawless was her vault that she’d begun smiling even before she stuck the landing clean.
before Game 2 of the 1984 World Series. Getty Images
The gold was hers.
The Games were hers.
She would be on Wheaties boxes for years.
She would be SI’s Sportswoman of the Year.
In his wonderful book “Glory Days,” L. Jon Wertheim wrote, “In many respects, this was the Women’s Olympics, an event that would represent a hinge point for women’s sports.”
Retton is very sick right now, fighting for her life, fighting a rare form of pneumonia, unable to breathe on her own.
Her family is seeking financial help because she is also uninsured.
She is an athlete worth your help, if you can spare it, and worth your thoughts and positive vibes, if you are so inclined.
Because once upon a time, in a time when you earned sporting fame by genuine accomplishment and not merely by collecting social media followers, Mary Lou Retton was more than just a gold medalist, she was the very biggest star in a year flush with stars.
She was a fighter then.
She remains a fighter now.
