Posted on 10/11/2023 8:25:50 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Your reply gave me a good laugh lol sometimes you just have to say I’m too tired to argue, do whatever you want!
Yeah, those “celebrity net worth” websites are not reality-based. Someone I went to high school with appears on one, and he’s told people that his number is inflated by like 5000% (and he’s not a modest sort of person who’d downplay it if it were real).
She was also self-employed and battling health and mobility issues for the last 30 years.
As someone who struggled with catastrophic medical debt (even with insurance), not having a reliable income can deplete your resources quickly. It got so bad, I sold my wedding ring one month to pay the mortgage.
Also, she recently divorced. Who knows what she lost in the split. It’s not just men that get hosed in court; sometimes the women do, too.
I wondered, since she’s been sick.
Thank you for clarifying.
The online net worth sites are bunk. They Joe, 4 Mansions, Biden is worth 2.5 million.
The real headline: Mary Lou Retton doesn’t have health insurance.
We bought the damned Wheaties. We didn’t even like Wheaties.
Obamacare said this wouldn’t happen.
Why is this a thing?
Somebody pushed the “send” button instead of the “save” button on their computer. Hope she survives...could be viral pneumonia or viral plus obscure resistant bacterial pneumonia, or she has asthma + all the other issues.
Very wealthy people usually have a net worth close to zero because they put their money into trusts or other things like corporations where the “owner” is a piece of paper, not the person.
I didn’t know McNamara was from Flushing, Queens and was married to Todd Ziele.
Its kind of funny as i was at the ‘84 Olympics- i trained for the decathlon for 11 years and a lot of my buddies were on the track competing (broke my ankle in the first decathlon competition in March of ‘84 and my season was over). I also live in NY and don’t remember any sort of recognition for her the way there was for swimmer Rick Carey.
She made huge money from endorsements back in the day. I was in Atlanta in 1996 and saw some gymnastics and she was all over the place- and guaranteed she was being paid big bucks by some corporation.
Whether she burned through her cash is another thing all together which i have no clue about.
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