Elite gymnastics season is in full swing, making it the perfect time to revisit one of the sport’s most unforgettable Olympic moments. For Bleacher Report, nothing tops Mary Lou Rettonand the clutch finish she delivered at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. The outlet ranked her perfect vault as its No. 1 greatest gymnastics moment in U.S. Olympic history.
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Held from July 28 to Aug. 12, 1984, the Games of the XXIII Olympiad were heavily impacted by the Cold War, with 14 Eastern Bloc nations boycotting the Games. Still, the politics were no match for Retton that day in early August, nor was the surgery she underwent weeks earlier to repair torn cartilage in her right knee.
Following a shaky performance on the uneven bars and balance beam, Retton trailed her rival, Ecaterina Szabo from Romania, by 0.15 points. She made up part of the deficit with a perfect-10 floor routine. But with the gap narrowed, she still needed one more perfect 10 to take the gold in the all-around event. It all came down to the vault, where the pressure couldn’t have been greater.
“Right before my vault, my coach [Bela Karolyi] said, ‘Mary Lou, give me a 10. Show me what you've got,” Retton, now 58, told People magazine in 2024.
Retton then delivered a legendary routine, executing an exceptionally difficult doubleTsukaharavault with a stuck landing. That routine secured Retton the perfect 10 she needed to not only win gold in the women’s all-around event but also to become the very first American woman to win an individual gold medal of any kind in the sport.
“I was smiling coming down from the vault,” she said. “Technically, my vault was perfect. I was one of the best vaulters in the world. … The entire Pauley Pavilion was going crazy, chanting ‘10, 10, 10.’ And then they popped the 10.”
With her first attempt securing her the historic gold medal, Retton didn’t need to take the second vault. But she did it anyway.
“When she vaulted and got a 10, she didn’t have to do a second vault,” said acclaimed gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos Field, per History. “She did [it] because she could, and I remember in that moment thinking, ‘This is what sports should be. It’s about playing the game. Not just about getting the medal and winning.”
Retton went on to win four more medals—two bronze and two silver—netting five total at the 1984 Games. Beyond the hardware, the 16-year-old gymnast changed the sport forever.
“Put all of the distraction about boycotts aside—no victory meant more to the growth of American gymnastics than Mary Lou Retton's all-around title at the 1984 Olympics,” Bleacher Report wrote. “By extension, no moment meant more than the one that sealed Retton's victory: her perfect 10 vault in the competition's final rotation.”
The outlet added, “Retton was a pioneer in so many regards and a key inspiration behind America's climb to the first tier of international gymnastics over the quarter century since.”
Four decades later, Retton’s vault remains the gold standard for performing under pressure. What a show.
Related: Olympic Gymnastics Legend, Who Scored the World’s First Perfect 10, Relives Her Greatest Performance 50 Years Later
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