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

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

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She was hospitalized with pneumonia last week.

“We pray for her, she has great vitality,” her son, Rafael Biro-Keleti, told the local press at the time, saying they would like to celebrate her 104th birthday on January 9 as a family.

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

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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.

– Secret training –

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

Called up to the national team in 1939, “the queen of gymnastics” won her first Hungarian title the following year, but later in 1940 she was banned from participating in any sporting activities due to her Jewish origins.

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After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, she escaped deportation to an extermination camp by obtaining false documents in exchange for all her possessions, assuming the identity of a young Christian.

While hiding in the countryside, she worked as a housekeeper, but continued to train in secret on the banks of the Danube when she had free time.

His father and several members of his family were killed at Auschwitz, while his mother and sister were rescued thanks to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.

Like many Hungarian athletes, Keleti did not return home from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, which took place a few weeks after the failure of the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary.

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The following year, she moved to Israel where she met and married in 1959 a Hungarian sports teacher, Robert Biro, with whom she had two children.

After retiring from competition, she worked as a physical education teacher and coached the Israeli national team.

She was only able to return home to then-communist Hungary for the world gymnastics championships in 1983. She returned to her home country in 2015.

“It was worth doing something well in life, given the attention I received, I get chills when I see all the articles written about me,” she told AFP in 2020, a few weeks before his 100th birthday.

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