Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, who is also the oldest Olympic champion, will celebrate her 100th birthday tomorrow.
Keleti, a five-time Olympic champion, is considered a great gymnast in Hungary as well as one of the most outstanding Jewish athletes in history.
When found at her home decorated with an Olympic medal display, she joked about not being allowed to perform the full-leg splits anymore.
“I’m told by my caretaker that it’s not good for me at this age,” she said while laughing.
“I feel good, but I don’t look in the mirror, that’s my trick! Then I remain young!” Keleti told AFP in Budapest in November.
Although the age factor caused her memory to be affected, the woman’s fighting spirit remained high.
Aside from her success at the Olympics and being a survivor of the ‘Holocaust’ disaster, the life story of this senior citizen does not change like a gripping Hollywood movie script.
Born in 1921, she overall won 10 gymnastics medals, five in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956) the majority of which were achieved after the age of 30, including fighting with much younger competitors.
“I did sport not because it felt good but to see the world,” Keleti told AFP in a 2016 interview.
Placed in the national team in 1939, she held her first Hungarian title the following year, but a year later was banned from participating in any sports activities due to her Jewish background.
After the German Nazi conquest of Hungary in March 1944, she survived being deported to a ‘death camp’ after obtaining fake documents with the identity of maid Piroska Juhasz.
“I stayed alive thanks to Piroska with whom I swapped not only clothes and papers, but also the way she talked,” added Keleti.
The father and several members of the Keleti family were killed in Auschwitz, while his mother and brother were rescued by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
Keleti later emigrated to Australia in 1957, a year after the failure of the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, before settling in Israel where he married sports coach Robert Biro in 1959.
They were later given birth to two children.
After retiring from participating in the competition, she worked as a physical education teacher and became the head coach of the Israeli national gymnastics team.
He then returned to his hometown in Hungary after the 1983 World Athletics Championships and has been living in his current home since 2015.
“It was worth doing something well in life, considering the attention I have received, I get the shivers when I see all the articles written about me,” Keleti says.
Source: France24, Times of India