Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, oldest Olympic champion, who escaped the Holocaust, died at 103

The oldest Olympic champion died on Thursday, January 2, at the age of 103, one week shy of her 104^e birthday. Born on January 9, 1921 in Budapest, under the birth name of Klein, Hungarian Agnes Keleti not only won ten Olympic medals, including five gold, in gymnastics, she also demonstrated impressive resilience to overcome the horrors of the 20th^e century.

“It was worth doing something good in life considering the attention I received. I get chills when I see all the articles written about me”she confided to Agance France-Presse, on the occasion of her hundredth birthday.

Agnes Keleti began gymnastics at the age of four and distinguished herself by becoming Hungarian champion for the first time in 1937. But she grew up in the particular context of virulent anti-Semitism. The first European anti-Semitic law was adopted in 1920 in Hungary, establishing a university numerus clausus to limit access to higher education for Jews. His vocation for gymnastics was then strengthened.

However, in 1940, when her country joined the Axis armed forces, she was excluded from the national team and banned from practicing sports because of her Jewish origins. She changes her name and takes the Hungarian surname of Keleti.

Dazzling at the Melbourne Olympics

In March 1944, while the Nazis invaded her country, she escaped the Shoah by obtaining – in exchange for all her property – “Christian papers” in the name of Piroska Juhasz. Refugee in the countryside, where she works as a servant, the future champion refuses to abandon her passion and trains in secret on the banks of the Danube.

His mother and sister are saved by the Righteous Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat. His father was not so lucky: he died during deportation to Auschwitz. At the start of the Second World War, 850,000 Jews lived in Hungary. At the end of the war, only 250,000 remained.

At the age of 24, and after the defeat of the Nazis, Agnes Keleti determinedly pursued her Olympic dream. Fate continued as a serious ankle injury during her last training prevented her from participating in the London Games in 1948. In the meantime, the young woman studied physical education. In 1949, she scored a quadruple at the World University Championships held in her hometown.

At the Helsinki Games in 1952, the Hungarian gymnast was already over thirty years old when she finally realized her Olympic ambitions. In Finland, she shined during the floor event, her great specialty, and won three other medals: silver and bronze in teams (all-around and group exercises with portable apparatus) and bronze on the uneven bars in individual.

Four years later, during the Melbourne Olympics, she dazzled the Australian public, winning three individual Olympic titles (on floor, balance beam and uneven bars) and the Olympic team floor title with the Hungarian team. . At 34, she added two other silver medals, in the individual all-around and the team all-around.

Like around forty other Hungarian athletes, Agnes Keleti took advantage of these Olympic Games, which took place from November 22 to December 8, a few weeks after the failure of the 1956 revolution (October 23-November 10), not to return in the country. She stayed in Australia for a few months before settling in Israel, where she was invited, in 1957, to give a gymnastics demonstration during the Maccabiads, Jewish sporting events organized every four years. In 1959, she married a Hungarian sports teacher, Robert Biro, with whom she had two children. Keleti is considered the founder of gymnastics in Israel.

Frenchman Charles Coste, new dean

After her retirement from sports, Agnes Keleti worked as a physical education teacher and coached the national team for twenty-two years. She only returned to Budapest in 1983, for the gymnastics world championships. In 2000, she was inducted into the gymnastics “Hall of Fame”. In the speech given on this occasion, she describes her sport aspoetic burn (“poetic art”). She returned to Budapest permanently in 2015.

Thanks to the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, France had wanted “pay tribute to his eminent merits” and awarded him, in September, the gold medal for youth, sports and community involvement.

“Thank you for everything!” » wrote Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Facebook, paying tribute to the champion. Her son, Rafael Biro Keleti, for his part, declared that Agnes Keleti had demonstrated, until the end of her life, a “incredible energy”.

According to the country's leading sports daily, National Sportit is now the Frenchman Charles Coste (100 years old, born February 8, 1924), gold medalist in the team pursuit in track cycling at the London Games in 1948, and bearer of the flame during the ceremony opening of Paris 2024, who succeeds Agnes Keleti as dean of Olympic champions.