Olympic champion Agnes Keleti died in Budapest on Thursday at the age of 103, making her the oldest living medal winner.
According to the newspaper, Keleti was hospitalized with pneumonia on December 25. new york times.
Born Agnes Klein in Budapest in 1921, the 10 Olympic medal winner almost lost her chance to compete in the prestigious world competition. She was born into a Jewish family, but when World War II broke out, her gymnastics career was put to an end by the Nazi regime that occupied Hungary. She missed out on competing in the 1940 Olympics when they were canceled due to war, and in 1941 she was expelled from the team because of her Jewish ancestry.
Fortunately, she survived the war by pretending to be a Christian and worked as a maid in the Hungarian countryside where fighting raged.
Her mother and sister escaped from the hands of the Nazis with the help of the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Sadly, she lost her father and several other relatives in the Auschwitz death camp, where she died along with half a million other Hungarian Jews.
After the war, Keleti returned to her gymnastics career and was scheduled to compete in the 1948 London Olympics, but problems arose again when she was forced to withdraw from competition due to an ankle injury.
But at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, she finally won the gold medal at the age of 31, winning a gold medal, a silver medal, and two bronze medals. She competed internationally again when she competed in the 1956 Olympics. In Melbourne, he won four gold medals and two silver medals, making him the most decorated athlete at the Games.
At the age of 35, Keleti sought political asylum in Australia after the 1956 Olympics as Soviet troops invaded her homeland. After passing, she immigrated to Israel and became a gymnastics trainer and coach for the Israeli Olympic team, a position she held until the 1990s.
At the time of her death, Keleti was tied for third place in Olympic gymnastics medals with five gold medals, along with Polina Astakhova of the Soviet Union and Nadia Comaneci of Romania. Her record was surpassed only by second place Vera Chaslavska (Czechoslovakia) with seven gold medals and first place Larisa Latynina (USSR) with nine gold medals.
Keleti was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 and the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame the following year.
In 2017, she received Israel's highest honor, the Israel Award, for supporting the development of Israel's gymnastics program.
“For me, sports were really just a way to see the world,” Keleti said in 2012. Some people said they were scared before the competition. That never happened to me. Gymnastics was just a part of my life. ”
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