Agnes Keleti, the world’s oldest living Olympic gold medalist and Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 103.
Hungarian gymnast Keleti, a five-time Olympic champion, won her first gold medal at the 1952 Helsinki Games at the age of 31, and won four more at the 1956 Melbourne Games, making her the oldest person to win a gold medal. became a female gymnast.
With 10 Olympic medals, including 5 gold medals, Keleti became the second most successful Hungarian athlete in history.
Keleti was born in Budapest in 1921 and won his first Hungarian championship in 1940, but later that year he was banned from all sporting activities because of his Jewish heritage.
According to the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC), Keleti escaped deportation to a Nazi concentration camp by hiding in a village south of Budapest with fake documents. Her father and several relatives died in the Auschwitz death camp.
A year after the Melbourne Games, Keleti settled in Israel, where she got married and had two children while coaching gymnastics.
Keleti died on Thursday at the Budapest Military Hospital, where he was being treated for heart failure and breathing difficulties, the HOC said. She would have turned 104 on January 9th.
