Israeli-Hungarian Agnes Keleti, one of the greatest Jewish athletes in history, dies at 103

Agnes Keleti, considered one of the best Jewish athletes ever, has died at age 103, Hungarian media reports.

She had been the oldest living Olympic champion — having won 10 medals in gymnastics — and would have turned 104 next Thursday.

The Holocaust survivor had Hungarian and Israeli citizenship. She continued to perform full leg splits well into her 90s.

Keleti, who was born Agnes Klein in 1921, had her illustrious career interrupted by World War II and the subsequent 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.

Keleti was awarded the Israel Prize in 2017 — considered the country’s highest cultural honor — and is the recipient of numerous other prestigious awards, including being named one of Hungary’s “Athletes of the Nation” in 2004.

AP contributed to this report.