Agnes KELETI (HUN) - 100 years old! |
Today the 5-time Hungarian former gymnast Olympic champion Àgnes KELETI celebrates her 100th birthday in the Hungarian capital Budapest.
The Holocaust survivor, born in Budapest in 1921, is currently now the oldest Olympic champion in the world.
With a "Swedish passport", the Jewess hid during the Second World War II as a Christian maid, named "Piroska Juhacz" in the Hungarian province and survived the Nazi hunt for Jews.
After the end of the war she started gymnastics again, but won her first Olympic gold medal in Helsinki in 1952, albeit at the age of 28, because she was hurt in 1948 before the Olympic Games in London. Four years after Helsinki she won 4 more golden in Melbourne of her altogehther 10 Olympic medals in 1956.
Àgnes KELETI (1949) - she injured herself before the 1948 Olympic Games and therefore had to forego a start in London ...
>> Agnes Keleti, 2002 in der Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City |
At the world championships that were still taking place every four years between the Olympic Games at the time, she was in the "Foro Italico" in Rome in 1954 in the Vice World Cup team of the Hungarians, where she became world champion on the uneven bars and won bronze on the uneven bars.
All in all, she is also one of the most successful Israeli athletes of all time, because after her career in Hungary she lived in Israel from 1956 on for almost 30 years, teaching there at the "Wingate Institute's" sports school, until she later, after marrying the Hungarian journalist Robert Biro, returned to her native city of Budapest.
Already in 2002 she was admitted to the "International Gymnastics HALL of FAME" in Oklahoma City (- see photo, right >).
At the age of 96 (2017) she was honored by the State of Israel with its highest award, the "Israel Prize".
* Ein historisches VIDEO fasst das Leben der Àgnes KELETI zusammen:
* Youtube (0967)