Ágnes Keleti

Ágnes Keleti (née Klein; ; 9 January 1921 – 2 January 2025) was a Hungarian and Israeli artistic gymnast and coach, who won multiple Olympic medals. She was the oldest living Olympic champion and medallist, reaching her 100th birthday on 9 January 2021. While representing Hungary at the Summer Olympics, she won 10 Olympic medals including five gold medals, three silver medals, and two bronze medals, and is considered to be one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes of all time. Keleti earned more Olympic medals than any other individual with Israeli citizenship, and more Olympic medals than any other Jew, except Mark Spitz. She was the most successful athlete at the 1956 Summer Olympics.

In 1957, Keleti immigrated to Israel, where she worked as a coach, eventually returning to her native Hungary in 2015 at the age of 94. In 2017, she was awarded the Israel Prize in sports.

Biography Agnes Klein (later Keleti) was born in Budapest, Hungary. She began to train in gymnastics at the age of 4, and by 16 was the Hungarian National Champion in gymnastics. Over the course of her career, between 1937 and 1956, she won the Championships title ten times. She changed her surname to Keleti to make it more Hungarian-sounding.

Keleti was considered a top prospect for the Hungarian team at the 1940 Olympics, but the escalation of World War II cancelled both the 1940 and the 1944 Games. She was expelled from her gymnastics club in 1941 for being a Jew. Because she had heard a rumour married women were not taken to labour camps, she hastily married István Sárkány in 1944. Her mother and sister went into hiding and were saved using Swiss protection papers issued by diplomat Carl Lutz and possibly also by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Her father and other relatives were murdered by the Nazis by gassing in the Auschwitz concentration camp. She qualified for the 1948 Summer Olympics, but missed the competition due to tearing a ligament in her ankle. She divorced her husband István Sárkány in 1950.

Keleti continued training and competed at the Olympics for the first time at the age of 31 at the 1952 Games in Helsinki. She earned four medals: gold in the floor exercise, silver in the team competition, and bronze in the team portable apparatus event and the uneven bars. Keleti continued on to the 1954 World Championships, where she won on the uneven bars, becoming world champion. The Hungarian team placed first in the portable apparatus event and second in the team competition. At the age of 35, Keleti became the oldest female gymnast ever to win gold. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary during the 1956 Olympics. Keleti, along with 44 other athletes from the Hungarian delegation, decided to remain in Australia and received political asylum. In 1959, she married Hungarian physical education teacher Robert Biro whom she met in Israel, and they had two sons, Daniel and Rafael. Keleti also coached and worked with Israel's national gymnastics team well into the 1990s. She became the oldest living Olympic champion when Lydia Wideman died on 13 April 2019. She celebrated her 100th birthday in January 2021.

Keleti died in Budapest on 2 January 2025, a week before her 104th birthday, after being hospitalised with pneumonia in the previous week. and the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2002. Keleti was named in Hungary's 12 "Athletes of the Nation" in 2004 Asteroid 265594 Keletiágnes, discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky in 2005, was named in her honour.

Competitive results Year Event Team TPA AA VT UB BB FX 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics 6 41 4 1954 Rome World Championships 4 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics 23