Agnes Keleti, Holocaust survivor and oldest living Olympic medalist, dies at 103

Agnes Keleti, a Holocaust survivor who coached Israel’s Olympic gymnastics teams for decades, has died. She was 103.

Keleti, who had been the oldest living Olympic medal winner, died Thursday morning in Budapest, the Hungarian state news agency reported. She was hospitalized in critical condition with pneumonia on December 25.

She won a total of 10 Olympic medals in gymnastics, including five golds, for Hungary at the 1952 Helsinki Games and the 1956 Melbourne Games. She overcame the loss of her father and several relatives in the Holocaust to become one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes.

“These 100 years felt to me like 60,” Keleti told The Associated Press on the eve of her 100th birthday. “I live well. And I love life. It’s great that I’m still healthy.”

Born Agnes Klein in 1921 in Budapest, her career was interrupted by World War II and the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics.

Forced off her gymnastics team in 1941 because of her Jewish ancestry, Keleti went into hiding in the Hungarian countryside, where she survived the Holocaust by assuming a false identity and working as a maid.

Her mother and sister survived the war with the help of famed Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, but her father and other relatives perished at Auschwitz, among the more than half a million Hungarian Jews killed in Nazi death camps and by Hungarian Nazi collaborators.

Resuming her career after the war, Keleti was set to compete at the 1948 London Olympics, but a last-minute ankle injury dashed her hopes.

Four years later, she made her Olympic debut at the 1952 Helsinki Games at the age of 31, winning a gold medal in the floor exercise as well as a silver and two bronzes. In 1956, she became the most successful athlete at the Melbourne Olympics, winning four gold and two silver medals.

While she was becoming the oldest gold medalist in gymnastics history at age 35 in Melbourne, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary following an unsuccessful anti-Soviet uprising. Keleti remained in Australia and sought political asylum.

She then immigrated to Israel the following year and worked as a trainer and coached the Israeli Olympic gymnastics team until the 1990s. She won the Israel Prize, one of the country’s highest honors, in 2017 for her contribution to sports.

Keleti returned to live in Hungary in 2015.

In a statement, the Olympic Committee of Israel mourned the loss of “the greatest Jewish athlete of all time.”

Keleti, the committee said, “was one of the founders of artistic gymnastics in Israel, raised generations of coaches and athletes and was an icon for excellence who inspired many in Israeli sports.”

President Isaac Herzog memorialized Keleti as a “ground-breaking woman whose life story is an inspiration to generations of athletes… she laid the foundations of gymnastics in Israel and served as tangible proof of the strength of the human spirit and the power of determination.”

Culture and Sport Minister Miki Zohar also eulogized Keleti, noting that she was “a Holocaust survivor who knew how to turn her pain into strength and her belief into spectacular achievements and victories — winning 10 Olympic medals and capturing thousands of hearts. Her legacy is one of endless inspiration for generations.”