Mary Lou Retton

America's golden girl — the first American woman to win the all-around Olympic gold medal.

Mary Lou Retton was born in Fairmont, West Virginia in 1968. She won the all-around gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics — the first American woman to win the Olympic all-around. Her vault score of 10.0 on the final apparatus — when she needed a perfect score to beat Ecaterina Szabo — is the most celebrated individual vault in Olympic gymnastics history. She appeared on the front of a Wheaties cereal box — the first female athlete to do so. She became an advertising icon. She lived with a rare form of hypoparathyroidism requiring hormone injections from 2022.

• Olympic Gold (1984 all-around)
• Olympic Silver 2x
• Olympic Bronze 2x