Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, the oldest Olympic champion in the world, died Thursday at the age of 103, according to her press secretary. She died in a Budapest hospital, Tamas Roth told AFP, confirming information from the country’s leading sports daily, National Sport. She was hospitalized last week with pneumonia a few days before her 104th birthday.
Agnes Keleti will have had a life worthy of a film script. She was born on January 9, 1921 in Budapest under the name Agnes Klein, then took a Hungarian-sounding surname. Called up to the national gymnastics team in 1939, the queen of floor routines was quickly excluded because of her Jewish origins. After the occupation of Hungary by the Third Reich in March 1944, she escaped deportation by obtaining false documents and assuming the identity of a young Christian, in exchange for all her property.
After 30 years, the medals
A refugee in the countryside, she works as a servant while secretly training on the banks of the Danube in her free time. His father and several members of his family were deported and exterminated in Auschwitz, while his mother and sister were saved thanks to the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
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After the war, she returned to competition, but had a false start in London in 1948: an injury put paid to her efforts and the Olympic Games again eluded her. He had to wait a few more years to win ten Olympic medals, including five gold at the Olympic Games in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956), all after the age of 30.
A tribute during the Paris Olympics
Like many Hungarian athletes, Agnes Keleti did not return home after the Australian events, which took place a few weeks after the failure of the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary. “I did sport not because it made me feel good but to see the world,” she said in 2016. She then moved to Israel where in 1959 she married a Hungarian sports teacher, Robert Biro, with whom she had two children.
On the occasion of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, France wished to “pay tribute to his eminent merits” and awarded him the gold medal for youth, sports and community involvement in September.
