Oldest Olympic gold medallist Keleti dies at 103

The world’s oldest living Olympic gold medallist and a Holocaust survivor, Agnes Keleti has died at the age of 103.

Five-time Olympic champion Hungarian gymnast Keleti won her first gold aged 31 at the 1952 Games in Helsinki, before winning four more in Melbourne in 1956 to become the oldest female gymnast to win gold.

Her 10 Olympic medals, including five golds, make Keleti the second most successful Hungarian athlete of all time.

Keleti was born in Budapest in 1921 and won her first Hungarian championship in 1940, but later that year she was banned from all sports activities because of her Jewish origin.

According to the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC), Keleti escaped deportation to Nazi death camps by hiding in a village south of Budapest with false papers. Her father and several relatives died in the Auschwitz death camp.

A year after the Melbourne Games, Keleti settled in Israel, where she married and had two children while coaching gymnastics.

Keleti died on Thursday at Budapest Military Hospital, where she was being treated for heart failure and breathing difficulties, says the HOC. She would have turned 104 on 9 January.

(BBC)

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