VIDEO: Ágnes Keleti, the world’s oldest living Olympic champion, turns 102

On Monday, Ágnes Keleti celebrates her hundred and second birthday. The five-time Olympic and one-time world champion gymnast, 46-time Hungarian champion and national athlete of the nation, has been the oldest person in the world to win a gold medal at the five Olympic Games for three years.

According to the Hungarian Olympics Committee (MOB), The birthday girl was born Ágnes Klein on 9 January 1921 in Budapest. She was raised to love and appreciate sport by her father, who himself led an active life, hiking and rowing on the Danube, and Ágnes was involved in these activities from an early age. If fate would have it otherwise, we might know her today as a renowned cellist, since she played music until she was 18, even performing at the Academy of Music. In the end, she chose gymnastics and brought much glory to Hungary. Keleti is a five-time Olympic champion Hungarian gymnast; the most successful competitor in Hungarian gymnastics, winning the Hungarian championship 46 times, and a seven-time team champion.

Ágnes Keleti had her share of good and bad: she had to endure a terrible period of persecution of the Jews, she was one of the regime’s favorites after 1945, but she could not feel free because she did not return from the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 and founded the Israeli gymnastics in her second homeland, the Holy Land. She has now been living in Budapest for many years, on 6 Október Street.

“Ági néni” is the oldest living Hungarian Olympic champion since the death of Sándor Tarics (21 May 2016) and the oldest living Olympic champion since the death of Finland’s Lydia Wideman (13 April 2019).

On Sunday, the 102-year-old Olympic champion was toasted by Hungarian Olympic Committee leaders:

Photo: MOB/Péter Szalmás