On Saturday, Keleti celebrated her 100th birthday. “I feel great. My trick is not looking in the mirror! Then I’ll stay young! ”She confided to AFP last November.
The five-time Olympic winner is not only the oldest Olympian, she is also the most successful Hungarian gymnast. She is also the most acclaimed Jewish athlete in history.
The most acclaimed athlete of Jewish origin is the American swimmer Mark Spitz. He was the most successful swimmer of all time until the Beijing Games. Then the American Michael Phelps overcame him.
Queen of gymnastics
Despite the age of Agnes’s short-term memory, the gymnast’s courageous spirit remains intact.
According to the AFP agency, he moves smartly in his apartment, in which he has exhibited medals and memories of the time of fame. She also jokes that she was banned from splitting. “According to my caregiver, it’s not good at my age,” Keleti laughed as she flipped through a new book published in her honor for her hundredth birthday. It bears the name Queen of gymnastics, one hundred years old Agnes Keleti.
The life story of Ágnes Keletio, who combines Olympic glory and the Holocaust, is like a Hollywood movie.
“I wanted to see the world”
Keleti was born in Budapest in 1921 as Ágnes Klein. She won ten medals for gymnastics, mainly in her thirties. She fought especially with girls who were even half younger. She won five gold medals in Helsinki in 1952 and in Melbourne in 1956.
“I did not do sports for a good feeling. I wanted to see the world, “she told AFP in an interview in 2016.
Keleti was part of the national team as early as 1939. At that time, she won her first title for Hungary. The following year, however, she could no longer play sports. Due to her Jewish origin, she was not allowed to perform any sports activities.
In 1944, the Keleti managed to escape from the transport to the extermination camp. She managed to get fake documents, pretending to be a maid named Piroska Juhászová.
“I survived thanks to Pirosca, we exchanged not only her clothes and papers. I also mastered how he talks, “said Keleti, who kept fit even in a hiding place in the countryside thanks to running.
Father Ágnes and other members of her family perished in Auschwitz. Her mother and brother were rescued by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. He saved up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews in Budapest. He provided them with Swedish protective passports.
In 1957, Keleti fled to Australia after the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary failed to suppress. Subsequently, she moved to Israel, where in 1959 she married a sports coach, the Hungarian Robert Bir. She had two children with him.
After retiring, she worked as a coach and became the coach of the Israeli National Gymnastics Team.
She returned home, to the then communist Hungary, only on the occasion of the championship in athletics, it was written in 1983.
“It was worth doing something in life really well if I took all the attention that was on me. I have a chill in my back when I read all the articles that have been written about me, “said Keleti.
