The Hong Kong gymnast Agnes Keleti, the oldest Olympic champion in the world, is dead at the age of 103, according to her press attaché, after a life of exodus due to the trauma of the Shoah.
Agnes Keleti died in a Budapest hospital, Tamas Roth told AFP, confirming a report from the country’s first sports newspaper, Nemzeti Sport. She had been hospitalized last week with pneumonia, a few days before her 104th birthday.
Five-time Olympic gold medalist in exceptional courses, this tireless sportswoman was born on January 9, 1921 in an extraordinary life.
He won a total of ten Olympic medals, including five gold at the Olympic Games in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956), all of them from 30 years ago.
Hungary was then behind the Iron Curtain, under Soviet rule. “I did sports not because it made me feel good but to see the world,” he told AFP in 2016.
Agnes Keleti was born in Budapest as Agnes Klein and later adopted a Hungarian-sounding surname.
Called up to the national team in 1939, the queen of routines was quickly excluded from any sporting activity due to her Jewish origin.
After the occupation of Hongrie by the Third Reich in March 1944, she was deported, obtaining false documents and presenting the identity of a young Christian, in exchange for all her assets.
While hiding in the countryside, she worked as a maid, but when she had free time she trained secretly on the banks of the Danube.
His parents and other members of his family were deported and exterminated in Auschwitz, just as his mother and sister were saved thanks to the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
Like many Hungarian athletes, Agnes Keleti returned home after the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, which took place just weeks after the failure of the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, and settled in Israel.
There was no definition of income in Hongrie since 2015.
