Agnes Keleti, who was the oldest Olympic champion, died this Thursday (2), at the age of 103. The Hungarian woman had been hospitalized since last week, with pneumonia, in a hospital in Budapest.
A gymnast of exceptional talent, she also had an extraordinary life and had to escape the Holocaust to win ten medals at the Olympic Games, five of them gold, obtained in 1952, in Helsinki, and in 1956, in Melbourne.
Born Agnes Klein on January 9, 1921, the athlete was called up to the national team in 1939, but ended up being banned from all sporting activities because of her Jewish origin.
After the occupation of Hungary by the Third Reich in March 1944, she escaped deportation by obtaining false documents and assuming the identity of a young Christian woman in exchange for all her belongings.
Hidden in a rural area, she worked as a maid but secretly trained on the banks of the Danube River when she had free time.
His father and several members of his family were deported and exterminated in Auschwitz, while his mother and sister were saved by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
Like many Hungarian sportswomen, Agnes Keleti did not return home after the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, which took place a few weeks after the failed anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, and settled in Israel.
She returned to Hungary permanently in 2015.
