Olympic Champion Agnes Keleti was the oldest living medal winner when she died in Budapest on Thursday at the age of 103.
Keleti had been hospitalized with pneumonia on Dec. 25, according to the New York Times.
Born in Budapest as Ágnes Klein in 1921, the 10-time Olympic medal winner almost lost her chance to compete in the famed World Games. She was born to a Jewish family, and when World War II broke out, her gymnastics career was ended by the Nazi regime that overtook Hungary. She lost one opportunity to compete when the 1940 Olympics were canceled due to the war and then was forced off her team in 1941 over her Jewish ancestry.
Fortunately, she survived the war by assuming a false identity as a Christian and worked as a maid in the Hungarian countryside as the battle raged.
Her mother and sister escaped the clutches of the Nazis with the assistance of famed Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Sadly, she lost her father and several other relatives to the death camp in Auschwitz, who died there along with a half a million other Hungarian Jews.
After the war, Keleti returned to her gymnastics career and was set to compete in the 1948 Olympics in London, but troubles struck again when a late ankle injury forced her to resign from the games.
However, gold finally came her way when she made the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, where she won a gold medal, a silver, and two bronzes at the age of 31. She appeared once again in the international games when she competed in the 1956 games in Melbourne and triumphed with an amazing four gold medals and two silvers, becoming the most-awarded athlete of the games.
With the Soviets invading her homeland, at the age of 35, Keleti sought political asylum in Australia after the 1956 games. Once accepted, she moved to Israel and became a gymnastics trainer and coach for the Israeli Olympic team, a job she held until the 1990s.
At the time of her death, Keleti was tied for third place in the most medals earned in Olympic gymnastics, along with Polina Astakhova of the Soviet Union and Nadia Comaneci of Romania, each with five golds. Her record was exceeded only by second-place Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia, with seven golds, and first-place winner Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union, who earned nine.
Keleti was inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 and the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame the following year.
In 2017, she was awarded Israel’s highest honor, the Israel Prize, for helping the country develop its gymnastics programs.
“For me, sports was really just a way to see the world,” Keleti said in 2012. “Maybe that’s why I never got nervous. People said they got scared before competitions. That never happened to me. Gymnastics was just a part of my life.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.