World’s oldest ever Olympic champion, Hungary’s Ágnes Keleti hospitalised in critical condition

Ágnes Keleti, the world’s oldest ever Olympic champion, an athlete and woman all Hungarians can be proud of, has been hospitalised with respiratory difficulties and heart failure. Nemzeti Sport, Hungary’s main sports magazine, learned additional details about her state and what exactly happened from an unnamed source close to the athlete’s family.

According to their article, Keleti’s state is critical and was hospitalised in Budapest’s Honvédkórház (Military Hospital Medical Centre) on Wednesday. Index.hu wrote that she is in a better state now, and there is hope for total recovery.

The Hungarian news outlet could speak with Rafael Bíró-Keleti, the younger son of the Hungarian Olympic champion. He said Ágnes Keleti suffered from pneumonia, and her condition worsened by Wednesday. Phlegm blocked her trachea, so even doctors gave her little chance of surviving.

Thankfully, the medical team managed to suck the phlegm. Therefore, she can breathe and could even smile again. Mr Bíró-Keleti said they were praying for her and hoped she would recover because her spirit was strong. He added that Ágnes Keleti would have her 104th birthday on 9 January, and they would like to celebrate it with the family.

Ágnes Keleti is the most successful Hungarian gymnast, a Holocaust survivor who lost her father in 1944. Only she, her sister and mother survived the death camps. After the war, she focused on gymnastics again. “Injury kept her out of the London Olympics in 1948, so she made her Olympic debut in 1952 in Helsinki at the age of 31, where she earned four medals: gold on floor, silver with the team and bronze in the team portable apparatus event and the uneven bars”, europeangymnastics.com wrote.

In 1954, she won the world title on uneven bars. 1956 was her most successful Olympics, winning four golds for Hungary (bars, beam, floor, portable apparatus team event) and silver with the team and in the all-around.

A video of her 103rd birthday:

The brutal Soviet clash of the Hungarian revolution and freedom fight of 1956 and a political asylum granted by Australia convinced her to remain in Melbourne after the Olympics. There, she could meet her mother and sister again.

Nine months later, she emigrated to Israel. There, she married and had two sons. She worked as a coach and as a physical education instructor at Tel Aviv University. She founded Israeli gymnastics and worked as the coach of the country’s female national team.

“I feel good, but I don’t like to look in the mirror. That’s my trick to remain young!”, she said when she turned 100.

We hope she will be able to celebrate her 104th birthday with her family. Our prayers are with her.

Read also:

• Hungarian Ágnes Keleti became the oldest Olympic champion of all time – read more HERE

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