Agnès Keleti, oldest Olympic champion and survivor, celebrates her 100th birthday
The retired Hungarian-Israeli Olympic and world champion gymnast Agnes Keleti poses for photos as she sits in front of a poster of her biography in her apartment in Budapest on November 6, 2020. AFP - ATTILA KISBENEDEK
Text by: Olivier Pron
3 min
One of the greatest gymnasts in history celebrates her 100th birthday today and it's a miracle.
Agnès Keleti was born on January 9, 1921. She escaped Nazism and camps, Stalinism and prison.
She lives in Budapest.
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“
I feel good.
The trick, in fact, is that you shouldn't look at yourself in a mirror
!
Agnès Keleti has her face wrinkled by misfortune, gray squared hair, and eyes that sparkle as in her prime.
She was born 100 years ago in Budapest and she is a miracle.
A century during which, Jewish, she first escaped the Holocaust and Auschwitz from which her mother and sister returned, but not her father.
Agnes impersonates, swaps clothes and takes on the accent of a young Christian cleaning lady and - ironically - works in the service of a Nazi general.
When the war was over, she resumed her career as a gymnast, from which her religion had excluded her in 1939. Deprived of the London Games in 1948 due to injury 3 weeks before, she shone at those of Helsinki in 1952 and especially in Melbourne in 1956. In total, she won 10 Olympic medals in all, including 5 gold.
The oldest surviving Olympic champion
We are then at the end of 1956 and the Soviet troops put Hungary under their control.
Agnès Keleti decides not to return home.
She stays in Australia then goes to Israel, where she takes nationality.
She did not return to Budapest until 1983, for a visit, then definitively in 2015.
This January 9, 2021, it is not a question of celebrating the athlete that she was, but the leading woman that she is still at 100 years old.
She is angry with her doctors who forbid her to do the splits, which she still did perfectly in recent months.
Agnès Keleti is today the oldest Olympic champion still alive.
But also a legend and an example.
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