(toskanews) – She was a myth and an icon, Agnes Keleti, Hungarian Olympic gymnastics champion and Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 103. She was the world’s oldest Olympic champion and passed away a few days before her 104th birthday due to pneumonia.
Born on January 9, 1921, she had an extraordinary life. Keleti escaped the Holocaust by taking on the identity of a young Christian maid in the Hungarian countryside, before becoming one of the most successful Jewish athletes in Olympic history, winning 10 medals, five of them gold, at two Games in Helsinki 1952 and Melbourne 1956.
“I competed not because I liked it, but because I wanted to see the world,” he said in an interview in 2016. From the Australian Games held a few weeks after the failure of the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, he did not return to his homeland and settled in Israel. She only returned to Hungary permanently in 2015.
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