BUDAPEST - Five-time Olympic champion Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, the world's oldest living Olympic gold medallist and a survivor of the persecution of Jews in World War Two, died at the age of 103 on Thursday, the Hungarian Olympic Committee said.
Keleti, who was hospitalized last week with pneumonia, passed just shy of her 104th birthday.
Born as Agnes Klein in Budapest on Jan 9, 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 origin.
"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.
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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 the Auschwitz death camp.
She won her first gold at the Helsinki games in 1952 aged 31, when most gymnasts had long been retired, the HOC said.
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, the HOC said. A year later Keleti settled in Israel, where she married and had two children.
Her 10 Olympic medals, including five golds, rank Keleti as the second most successful Hungarian athlete of all time, the HOC said. She has also received multiple Hungarian state awards.
Beyond her athletic achievements, Keleti played a pivotal role in shaping gymnastics on a global scale. After the Melbourne Games, she chose not to return to Hungary and settled in Israel, where she became instrumental in developing gymnastics as both a coach and educator. Her efforts left a lasting legacy in Israeli sports, and she continued to mentor and inspire athletes until her retirement at 75.
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Hungary's Secretary of State for Sports, Adam Schmidt, described Keleti in an interview with Xinhua on the occasion of her 103rd birthday in 2024 as both a "national treasure" and "an example to follow".
With Xinhua inputs
