In June 1984, Mary Lou Retton was practicing her floor routine in Houston, Texas, where she was living with her coach Bela Karolyi and his wife Marta. Suddenly, she experienced knee pain. "I felt something in my knee," she told Gannett News Service. "But so what? I had a past injury and you have to perform with a little pain anyhow." But this turned out to be serious. On June 15, a little more than six weeks before winning Olympic gold, a Virginia surgeon performed arthroscopic surgery on Retton's right knee to repair a piece of cartilage that had broken loose. The doctor told her she wouldn't be going to the Olympics that year.
She proved him wrong. Not only did she take the individual gold, she helped lead the U.S. female gymnastics team to a silver and then won an individual bronze in the uneven bars and floor and another silver in the vault.
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