Shaley Kelley Schrepfer, the oldest of Retton’s four daughters, posted an update on Retton’s condition on Instagram nearly two weeks after the family disclosed that the former Olympic all-around champion was in intensive care.
The 55-year-old Retton is now in “recovery mode,” according to Schrepfer.
“We still have a long road of recovery ahead of us,” Schrepfer wrote. “But baby steps.”
The family disclosed earlier this month that Retton — who became the first American female gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Los Angeles Games — was “fighting for her life” and unable to breathe on her own.
Donations have poured into a fundraiser the family set up to help offset Retton’s medical expenses after the family said she didn’t have medical insurance. There’s been more than 8,300 donations totaling nearly $460,000 by Monday afternoon.
Retton was 16 when she became an icon of the U.S. Olympic movement during her gold medal-winning performance at the 1984 Summer Games. The native of Fairmont, West Virginia, also won two silver and two bronze medals at those Olympics to help bring gymnastics — a sport long dominated by eastern European powers like Romania and the Soviet Union — into the mainstream in the U.S.
