Agnes Keleti, world's oldest Olympic champion, dies at 103
- 02 Jan 2025
Agnes Keleti, the world's oldest Olympic champion has died at the age of 103.
She passed away on Thursday at Budapest hospital, her press official Tamas Roth told AFP, confirming a report from local sports daily Nemzeti Sport. She was hospitalised with pneumonia last week.
"We pray for her, she has a great vitality," her son, Rafael Biro-Keleti told local press at the time.
Keleti's life story, including surviving the Holocaust and Olympic glory, reads like a gripping Hollywood film script, with her feisty spirit never breaking in the face of adversity.
As Hungary's most successful gymnast, she won ten Olympic medals, all of them after reaching the age of 30 against much younger competitors, including five gold medals in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956).
Her motivation to do sports was not to chase glory, but to travel abroad, outside the Iron Curtain from the communist-ruled Hungary.
"I was competing not because I liked it but I did it because I wanted to see the world," she told AFP in 2016.
Born on Jan.9, 1921 in Budapest as Agnes Klein, she later changed her surname to the more Hungarian-sounding Keleti.
Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, paid a fulsome tribute to Keleti.
"Thank you for everything" Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban wrote on Facebook, sharing a photo of Keleti.
According to Hungarian daily Nemzeti Sport, 100-year-old Frenchman Charles Coste, gold medallist in men's team cycling pursuit at the 1948 London games, succeeds Keleti as the oldest Olympic champion.
Coste was born on 8 February 1924, and carried the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris games last year.
Agence France-Presse