Agnes Keleti: Oldest Olympic gold medallist dies at 103
Agnes Keleti, the world’s oldest Olympic gold medalist and Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 103.
five time olympic champion Hungarian gymnast Keleti She won her first gold medal at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 at the age of 31, and went on to win four more gold medals in Melbourne in 1956, becoming the oldest female gymnast to win a gold medal.
Keleti won 10 Olympic medals, including five gold medals, becoming Hungary’s second most successful athlete of all time.
Keleti was born in Budapest in 1921 and won her first Hungarian championship in 1940, but later that year she was banned from all sports because of her Jewish heritage.
According to the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC), Keleti escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp by hiding in a village south of Budapest with false documents. Her father and several relatives died in Auschwitz.
A year after the Melbourne Olympics, Keleti settled in Israel, where she married, had two children, and worked as a gymnastics coach.
Keleti died on Thursday at the Budapest Military Hospital, where she was being treated for heart failure and breathing difficulties, HOC said. On January 9, she will celebrate her 104th birthday.
