Former Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton was captured on video being arrested for alleged drunk driving and handcuffed around her oxygen tank.
Newly released police body camera footage showed officers cuffing the retired American gymnast around her oxygen tank as she shouted, ‘I’m a gold medalist!’
The 57-year-old wearing flip flops, a T-shirt and shorts told officers she went out to ‘get her nails done’ and seemed surprised that they stopped her car, the clip obtained by the Daily Mail shows.
Retton proceeded to tell officers they were ‘too old to know who she was’.
She eventually said she could not stand with one leg up for nine seconds, and appeared defiant when asked to do sobriety tests.
When one officer told Retton she should be good at the tests, she shot back: ‘Yeah! I mean upside down.’
‘This is ridiculous, I’m a gold medalist,’ Retton said.
She also notified them that she was ‘West Virginia’s first daughter’.
Retton stumbled while trying to lift a leg in the air and could not keep her head still while moving her eyes with an officer’s finger. Officers told her she failed all three tests and she complained that she had not.
She also refused to take a breath test and called the officers ‘crazy’.
The officers told Retton she was being arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and she said, astonished, ‘I’m going to have to go to jail?’
Retton was placed in the backseat of a Fairmont Police Department vehicle.
Footage from the police department revealed that her oxygen tank had run out and that she rejected another supply.
‘F*** that,’ she told them.
‘Put me in the cell. Y’all are terrible. I nearly died from double pneumonia.
‘I’ll die here and you guys will live with that. I’m crazy right now I’m so lightheaded.’
Retton added that ‘I’ll die in your cell’, and when an officer said they didn’t want that, she insisted, ‘Yes you do.’
After her arrest on May 17, Retton pleaded no contest to a non-aggravated DUI charge at Marion County Magistrates Court in Fairmont, West Virginia. She was hit with a $100 fine.
Afterward, she told Entertainment Tonight that she takes ‘full responsibility’ for her actions.
‘What happened was completely unacceptable. I make no excuses. To my family, friends and my fans: I have let you down, and for that I am deeply sorry,’ she said.
‘I am determined to learn and grow from this experience, and I am committed to making positive changes in my life. I truly appreciate your concern, encouragement and continued support.’
Retton won a gold medal in the individual all-around competition at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and two silver and two bronze medals. She was one of the most popular US athletes at the time and nicknamed ‘America’s sweetheart’.
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