Ágnes Keleti, the oldest living Olympic gold medallist, died yesterday, January 2, at the age of 103, only a week before her 104th birthday. An Hungarian gymnast, she won one Gold medal in Helsinki 1952 and four Gold medals in Melbourne 1956, in Floor exercise and Uneven bars. She also won Gold medal in Uneven bars in the World Championship in Rome 1954.
Keleti won her first Hungarian championship in 1940. However, she was expelled for being a Jew in 1941, and had to change her identity to survive the war, working as a maid in a small village pretending to be Christian. Her mother and sister also went into hiding, but his father and other relatives were killed in Auschwitz.
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She resumed her career after the war, and went on to become one of the most successful Hungarian athletes ever, winning ten Olympic medals. When the Soviet Union invaded Hungary during the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, she and other Hungarian athletes decided to remain in Australia and seek for political asylum, she later moved to Israel, where he married a physical education teacher and had two sons.
Keleti died after being hospitalised with pneumonia in Budapest. When Lydia Wideman died in 2019, she had become the oldest living Olympic champion. In 2023, she was still enjoying an active life, doing exercise, eating lots of fruit and chocolate, and watching gymnastics on TV, as reported by EFE.