Oldest living Olympic medal winner Agnes Keleti dies aged 103
2 January 2025, 09:14
The Holocaust survivor won a total of 10 Olympic medals in gymnastics, including five golds, for Hungary.
Agnes Keleti, a Holocaust survivor and the oldest living Olympic medal winner, has died aged 103.
Keleti died on Thursday morning in Budapest, the Hungarian state news agency reported. She was admitted to hospital in critical condition with pneumonia on December 25.
She won a total of 10 Olympic medals in gymnastics, including five golds, for Hungary at the 1952 Helsinki Games and the 1956 Melbourne Games. She overcame the loss of her father and several relatives in the Holocaust to become one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes.
“These 100 years felt to me like 60,” Keleti told The Associated Press on the eve of her 100th birthday. “I live well. And I love life. It’s great that I’m still healthy.”
🏅 Today we bid farewell to Ágnes Keleti, Hungary's most decorated Olympian and an icon of gymnastics, who passed away at the age of 103. Her unparalleled achievements and indomitable spirit will forever inspire generations. 🏴 pic.twitter.com/e8sEbbl2fd
— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) January 2, 2025
Born Agnes Klein in 1921 in Budapest, her career was interrupted by the Second World War and the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics. Forced off her gymnastics team in 1941 because of her Jewish ancestry, Keleti went into hiding in the Hungarian countryside, where she survived the Holocaust by assuming a false identity and working as a maid.
Her mother and sister survived the war with the help of famed Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, but her father and other relatives perished at Auschwitz, among the more than half a million Hungarian Jews killed in Nazi death camps and by Hungarian Nazi collaborators.
Resuming her career after the war, Keleti was set to compete at the 1948 London Olympics, but a last-minute ankle injury dashed her hopes.
Four years later, she made her Olympic debut at the 1952 Helsinki Games at the age of 31, winning a gold medal in the floor exercise as well as a silver and two bronzes. In 1956, she became the most successful athlete at the Melbourne Olympics, winning four gold and two silver medals.
While she was becoming the oldest gold medallist in gymnastics history at the age of 35 in Melbourne, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary following an unsuccessful anti-Soviet uprising. Keleti remained in Australia and sought political asylum. She then immigrated to Israel the following year and worked as a trainer and coached the Israeli Olympic gymnastics team until the 1990s.
