Over time, his name had faded from memory. With Agnes Keleti, Olympism lost on January 2, one of its most illustrious representatives and History, a witness to the horrors of the 20th century. The former gymnast died at the dawn of 2025 in a Budapest hospital a few days before her 104th birthday due on January 9. She was hospitalized during the holidays due to pneumonia. Until her death, the centenarian was the oldest Olympic champion in the world.
In the 1950s, the Hungarian won a total of 10 Olympic medals (5 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze) including five gold in Helsinki in 1952 and Melbourne in 1956. Her record still makes her one of the athletes of the Games the most multi-awarded summer in Olympic history.
In Finland, the gymnast triumphed on floor and four years later, she achieved a hitherto unprecedented quadruple in group exercises with portable team apparatus, floor, parallel bars and beam. To complete her collection, she also won silver in the all-around competition in Australia.
In 1954, Agnes Keleti was also crowned world champion on parallel bars. In a sport where retirement can now come at age 20, the Hungarian triumphs even though she is already over thirty. She will undoubtedly remain like this for eternity, the oldest Olympic champion gymnast, climbing to the highest step at 35 years old.
In 1957, she moved to Israel
Because in his youth, the war shattered his career. Born Agnes Klein, the gymnast was Jewish in central Europe crushed under the Nazi heel. Best Hungarian gymnast at the end of the 1930s and already called to the national team in 1939, she was excluded from the selection because of her religion. By a miracle, however, she escaped the Shoah.
She saves her life by a brilliant and dangerous subterfuge. She loses all her possessions but takes a Christian name, calls herself Piroska Juhasz and works for a family of Nazi sympathizers who see nothing but fire. On the banks of the Danube, in secret, she continued to train, hoping to resume her career after the conflict.
When bombings and war swept through Budapest in 1944, the gymnast picked up corpses in the streets to bury them in mass graves. Deported, his father died at Auschwitz. Her sister is saved by a miracle by the righteous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who tricks Nazi officials into trying to spare thousands of unfortunate people from deportation.
A little over 10 years after the end of the war; history catches up with Ágnes Keleti again. A few days before the Melbourne Games, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 broke out. In Australia, a few days before the start of the competitions, the gymnast learned of a tragedy. His mother, who also miraculously survived the Shoah, died in the riots. Like 44 other Hungarian athletes, Ágnes Keleti decided not to return to the country and requested political asylum in Australia. She returned in 1957 to settle in Israel where she became coach of the national gymnastics team.
The oldest Olympic champion is now Frenchman Charles Coste
She returned to Hungary for the first time in 1983 before settling there permanently in 2015 to end her long and sometimes painful life. “Your story is truly inspiring. You showed the power of determination and courage to overcome tragedy. I am sure that if you had participated in the London Olympic Games in 1948, you could have had even more,” Thomas Bach, the IOC President, testified to him on the occasion of his centenary in 2021. “I played sport not because it made me feel good but to see the world,” she said.
It is now the Frenchman Charles Coste, gold medalist in the team pursuit in track cycling at the London Games in 1948, who succeeds Agnes Keleti as the oldest Olympic champion. Centenarian, born February 8, 1924, he carried the flame during the opening ceremony of the Paris Games
