Agnes Keleti, the world’s oldest Olympic champion and a Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 103.
She died on Thursday at a Budapest hospital, according to her press official, Tamas Roth, confirming a report from local sports daily Nemzeti Sport. She was hospitalized with pneumonia last week.
“We pray for her, she has a great vitality,” her son, Rafael Biro-Keleti, told local media at the time.
Keleti’s life story, including surviving the Holocaust and Olympic glory, reads like a gripping Hollywood film script, with her feisty spirit never breaking in the face of adversity.
As Hungary’s most successful gymnast, she won 10 Olympic medals, all of them after reaching the age of 30 and against much younger competitors, including a gold medal at the Helsinki Games in 1952 and four more golds at the 1956 Summer Games in Melbourne.
Her motivation to compete was not to chase glory, but to travel abroad, outside the Iron Curtain from communist-ruled Hungary.
“I was competing not because I liked it, but I did it because I wanted to see the world,” she said in 2016.
Born on Jan. 9, 1921, in Budapest as Agnes Klein, she later changed her surname to the more Hungarian-sounding Keleti.
Called up to the national team in 1939, “the Queen of Gymnastics” won her first Hungarian title in 1940, but was barred from taking part in any sporting activity later that year due to her Jewish background.
After the Nazi German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, she escaped deportation to a death camp by obtaining false documents in exchange for all her belongings, assuming the identity of a young Christian woman.
She worked as a maid while hiding in the countryside, but kept training in secret on the banks of the Danube River, when she had free time.
Her father and several members of her family were killed in Auschwitz, while her mother and sister were rescued thanks to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
Like many fellow Hungarian athletes, Keleti did not return home from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, which were held weeks after Hungary's failed anti-Soviet uprising.
The following year, she settled in Israel, where she met and married Hungarian sports teacher Robert Biro in 1959, with whom she had two children.
After retiring from competition, she worked as a physical education teacher, and coached the Israeli national team.
She was only able to return home to then-communist Hungary for the World Gymnastics championships in 1983. She moved back to her home country in 2015.
"It was worth doing something well in life, considering the attention I have received, I get the shivers when I see all the articles written about me," she said in 2020, weeks before her 100th birthday.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach paid tribute to Keleti.
"Agnes Keleti has demonstrated the power of strong determination and courage to overcome tragedy when she, born to a Jewish family, survived the Holocaust and went on to win ten Olympic medals after World War II, five of them Gold," he said in a statement.
Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban posted a tribute on Facebook, sharing a photo of Keleti.
"Thank you for everything," he said.
According to Nemzeti Sport, 100-year-old Frenchman Charles Coste, gold medalist in men's team cycling pursuit at the 1948 London games, succeeds Keleti as the oldest Olympic champion.
Coste was born on Feb. 8, 1924, and carried the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris Games last year.
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