Agnès Keleti, the oldest Olympic champion in the world, died at 103

Agnès Keleti, the world’s oldest Olympic champion, has died at the age of 103.

She died Thursday in Budapest hospital, her press officer Tamas Roth told AFP, confirming information from the local sports daily Nemzeti Sport. She was hospitalized with pneumonia last week.

“We pray for her, she has great vitality,” her son, Rafael Biro-Keleti, told the local press.

Keleti’s life story, including her survival of the Holocaust and her Olympic glory, reads like a gripping Hollywood movie script, with her fiery spirit never breaking in the face of adversity.

As Hungary’s most successful gymnast, she won ten Olympic medals, all after reaching the age of 30 against much younger competitors, including five gold medals in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956) .

His motivation for playing sports was not to seek glory, but to travel abroad, outside the Iron Curtain, far from communist Hungary.

Agnes Keleti, 95, does the splits in front of young Hungarian gymnasts at a local training center in Budapest. File/AFP

“I competed, not because I loved it, but I did it because I wanted to see the world,” she told AFP in 2016.

Born on January 9, 1921 in Budapest as Agnes Klein, she later changed her last name to the more Hungarian-sounding Keleti.

Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), paid a glowing tribute to Keleti.

“Thank you for everything,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban wrote on Facebook, sharing a photo of Keleti.

According to the Hungarian daily Nemzeti Sport, 100-year-old Frenchman Charles Coste, gold medalist in the men’s cycling team pursuit at the 1948 London Games, succeeds Keleti as the oldest Olympic champion.

Coste was born on February 8, 1924 and carried the Olympic flame during the opening ceremony of the Paris Games last year.

Agence France-Presse