Agnes Keleti, oldest living Olympic gold medallist, dies at 103

The Hungarian five-time Olympic champion gymnast Agnes Keleti, the world’s oldest living Olympic gold medallist and a survivor of the persecution of Jews in the second world war, has died at the age of 103, the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC) said.

January 9th would have been the 104th birthday of the Hungarian National Athlete, the first Olympic gold medalist of the University's (HUSS) sports club TFSE, which is also 100 years old.

Born as Agnes Klein in Budapest on 9 January 1921, Keleti joined the National Gymnastics Association in 1938 and won her first Hungarian championship in 1940, only to be banned from all sports activities that year because of her Jewish heritage.

“Agnes Keleti is the greatest gymnast produced by Hungary, but one whose life and career were intertwined with the politics of her country and her religion,” the International Olympic Committee said in a profile on its website on Thursday.

The HOC said Keleti escaped deportation to Nazi death camps, where hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were killed, by hiding in a village south of Budapest with false papers. Her father and several relatives died in Auschwitz.

She won her first Olympic gold at the Helsinki Games in 1952 aged 31. Keleti reached the peak of her career in Melbourne in 1956 where she won four gold medals and became the oldest female gymnast to win gold. A year later, Keleti settled in Israel, where she married and had two children.

Her 10 Olympic medals, including five golds, made Keleti the second most successful Hungarian Olympian of all time, the HOC said. She received multiple Hungarian state awards.

Tags: Ágnes Keleti

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