A lawyer for U.S. gymnastics legend Mary Lou Retton said she is “in good spirits,” despite being arrested last month on suspicion of driving while intoxicated in her hometown in West Virginia.
But Retton’s being in “good spirits” apparently is news to family members in Fairmont, West Virginia. The Daily Mail reported they that they haven’t heard from Retton since her May 17 arrest. They didn’t even know she was in town before she was caught by police driving a Porsche with a screw-top bottle of wine besides her in the car.
Retton is based in Boerne, Texas, near San Antonio, but she drove all the way to West Virginia for reasons that also remain unknown to her family.
“Her family had no idea she was here at all, they found out about the arrest when everyone else did,” a source told the Daily Mail.
It’s also unclear if Retton has been in contact with her four daughters, all of whom declined to talk to the Daily Mail. Moreover, Retton hasn’t been seen at her home in Boerne, with the Daily Mail publishing a photo showing packages and flyers piling up on the front porch.
Retton’s attorney, Edmund Rollo, however, issued a statement Tuesday to the Daily Mail, saying that the Olympic gold medalist was in “good spirits.”
“She is very appreciative of all of the support she has received,” Rollo said. “‘Mary Lou will issue a statement at the appropriate time. Until then, please respect her privacy.”
There’s not much chance Retton will get that desired privacy, given that she was one of the most famous athletes on the planet after she won the individual all-around gold medal and scored two perfect 10s at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Last year, Retton also was involved in a sad and messy controversy over how she, a reported multimillionaire, garnered nearly $500,000 in donations from fans after claiming she didn’t have health insurance to cover the costs of a hospital stay for what was described as a rare and near-fatal bout of pneumonia.
Retton’s arrest is sure to add to questions about what’s happened in recent years to the decorated athlete and media personality who once came as close to anyone to defining the idea of America’s sweetheart.
The Daily Mail last week published the details about her arrest. Court documents in Marion County show that she had been seen “driving all over the roadway” in Fairmont, a town of about 18,000 people where she was born in 1968.
Retton then pulled over at an AutoZone, where police contacted her in her still-running luxury sports car and found that there was an “odor of alcohol” coming from her, the Daily Mail reported. Retton also slurred her words and had a bottle of wine on the passenger seat next to her.
Court records also show that she failed all three phases of a standard field sobriety text, the Daily Mail said. She refused to submit to a roadside preliminary breath test, as well as a secondary chemical test of her blood. She was charged with one count of “driving under influence of alcohol, controlled substances, or drugs,” then released after she personally posted a $1,500 bond.
While the Daily Mail reported that Retton’s daughters didn’t respond to requests for comment, it noted that the gymnast and her children have long tried to portray themselves as having a close relationship. Then again, the Daily Mail also said that her daughters have not posted photos of their mother on their social media accounts in the last six months.
Her youngest daughter, Emma, is set to get married later this month in Dallas, and it’s not known if Retton will attend, the Daily Mail said.
Perhaps that’s because the daughters became embroiled in Retton’s health insurance controversy. After all, they set up the crowdsourcing campaign on spotfund.com in October 2023 to raise money to cover their mother’s hospital bills. They revealed that she was in the hospital “fighting for her life” and said they needed the money because their mother didn’t have health insurance.
While the campaign earned $200,000 in its first day — and $459,000 total — some in the public and the media began to ask why someone as famous and presumably as wealthy as Retton didn’t have health insurance.
Two months after Retton’s health crisis, she sat for an interview with the “Today” show in early 2024, saying that the “bottom line” is that she couldn’t afford health insurance. She blamed her plight on the COVID-19 pandemic, her 2018 divorce and pre-existing conditions from multiple surgeries over the years from sports-related injuries.
In another interview, Retton also defended her daughters against the backlash, saying, “They didn’t deserve that.” She also said, “They were just trying to take care of me. I don’t care about the naysayers. There are trolls everywhere. It’s what makes us America. Everybody’s got an opinion, but it is what it is.”
But criticism continued to grow over the view that Retton and her daughters still had not been forthcoming about her financial challenges, her reasons for not having insurance and how they used the $459,000 from the spotfund.com campaign.
The Daily Mail subsequently obtained court records, which showed that Retton received $2 million in her 2018 divorce settlement from former Texas Longhorns quarterback-turned real estate developer Shannon Kelly. She also was poised to potentially earn $2 million more in compensation over a legal dispute with the manufacturer of two metal hip replacements that went wrong, the Daily Mail reported.
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