AJN Agency.- The oldest Olympic champion among those alive, the Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, celebrated her 100th birthday in her native country with surprising vitality, after a life of exodus marked by the Holocaust and the glory of the podiums.
“I feel good: the trick is that you don’t have to look in the mirror,” ironized the venerable Keleti, born on January 9, 1921, in an interview with the AFP news agency in her Budapest apartment.
Keleti celebrated his birthdays by receiving the International Fair Play Award from the president of the International Fair Play Committee, Dr. Jano Kamuti.
The award was presented to Keleti during his birthday celebrations at the Rombach Street Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary.
The president of the organization highlighted at the award ceremony: “Ágnes Keleti’s career as an athlete, teacher and lecturer at the university has always been characterized by acceptance of the other and tolerance, which are the basic ideas of fair play. We have known each other for many years, decades, and I hope it lasts a long time. Happy birthday, Ágnes! “
Keleti has won 5 gold medals in Olympic Games and World Championships and four times also in Universiade. She has received a variety of awards and, among others, was inducted into the 2001 Hall of Fame and the 2002 International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.
Also, starting this year, the Israeli Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Championship will be named after the esteemed Jewish Olympic gymnast Ágnes Keleti in honor of her next centenary, to be held on January 9.
Keleti, a retired Hungarian-Israeli Olympic and World Champion artistic gymnast and coach, is considered the world’s most decorated Jewish gymnast of all time. He won a whopping 10 Olympic medals competing for the Hungarian national team, where he was born and raised.
During the world championships in Rome in 1954, Keleti was recognized as a world champion for floor and uneven bars. Then in 1957, when he was 36 years old, he came to Israel for the fifth event of the World Maccabean Games and decided to make aliyah (immigrate) after the tournament.
Moving to Israel did not mean putting her passion on hold, and three years later, in 1960, Keleti led the Israeli Olympic team of three gymnasts to the Olympics in Rome. Later, he also established the first Israeli national team for gymnastics shows for entertainment that represented Israel in various shows around the world beginning in 1964.
In 2017, Keleti won the Israel Prize in the category of Sport and Physical Culture.
Leading young Israel in the previously undeveloped field and putting him on the map has made Keleti a hero to Israeli gymnasts and athletes ever since. Naming the Israel Artistic Gymnastics Championship for Women in honor of Keleti was the result of the efforts made by one of her first students in Israel during the 1960s: Chaya Halperin.
Gili Lustig, CEO of the Israel Olympic Committee, said the decision to honor Keleti was not difficult.
Keleti expressed her gratitude for the decision to recognize her lifelong contribution to the field of gymnastics in Israel.
Agility, defiance and humor are traits that helped Keleti survive the Shoah by hiding and becoming the most successful athlete alive in Hungary. She is also among the most decorated Jewish female Olympians of all time, behind the 12 medals of American swimmer Dara Torres.
In Budapest, Keleti leads a comfortable life in a central apartment that she shares with a caregiver and some 40 orchids that were discarded but rescued and cared for by both women.
“I have a good life here, I feel at home,” Keleti said in 2019, after lighting the Olympic flame at the Maccabi European Games.
Keleti is entitled to a monthly stipend of $ 13,000 under a law that compensates Olympians in proportion to the number of medals they won.
