103: Agnes Keleti

Ágnes Keleti turns 103 years old today (January 9^th.)

Ágnes Keleti (née Klein) was born on January 9. 1921 in Budapest Hungary. She is a Hungarian-Israeli, a Holocaust Survivor and retired Olympic and World Champion Artistic Gymnast and Coach.

Keleti is Jewish. Her Father was Ferenc Klein, born in Szeged, Hungary and her Mother was Róza Gyárfás (né Grünberger.)

She began 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.

Keleti was considered a top prospect for the Hungarian Team at the 1940 Olympics, but the escalation of World War II canceled both the 1940 and the 1944 Games.

She was expelled from her Gymnastics Club in 1941 for being a non-Aryan by the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross Party in charge.  

Because she had heard a rumor married Women were not taken to labor camps, she hastily married István Sárkány in 1944. Sárkány was a Hungarian gymnast of the 1930s who achieved National Titles and took part in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. They divorced in 1950.

Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in 1944. Keleti survived the War by purchasing and using an Identity Card of a Christian Girl and worked as a Maid in a small village.

Her Mother and Sister went into hiding and were saved using Swiss Protection Papers issued by Diplomat Carl Lutz who worked with the Swedish Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest.  Her Father and other Relatives were murdered by the Nazis by gassing in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

In the winter of 1944–45, during the Siege of Budapest by Soviet Forces near the end of World War II, Keleti would collect bodies of those who had died and place them in a mass grave.

After the war, Keleti played the cello professionally and resumed Gymnastics training. In 1946, she won her first Hungarian Championship.

In 1947, she won the Central European Gymnastics Title.  She qualified for the 1948 Summer Olympics, but missed the Competition due to tearing a ligament in her ankle. At the World University Games of 1949 she won four Gold, one Silver, and one Bronze Medal.

She 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.

At the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, Keleti won six Medals including Gold Medals in three of the four Individual Event Finals: Floor, Bars, and Balance Beam, and placed second in the All-Around.

She was the most successful athlete at those Games. 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.  She became a Coach for Australian Gymnasts.

Keleti emigrated to Israel in 1957, competing in the 1957 Maccabiah Games, and was able to send for her Mother and Sister in Communist-Hungary.

In 1959, she married Hungarian Physical Education Teacher Robert Biro whom she met in Israel, and they had two Sons, Daniel and Rafael.

Following her Retirement from Competition, Keleti worked as a Physical Education Instructor at Tel Aviv University, and for 34 years at the Wingate Institute for Sports in Netanya.

She also coached and worked with Israel's National Gymnastics Team well into the 1990s.

Since 2015, she has lived in Budapest.

She is the oldest living Olympic Champion and Medalist, reaching her 100th birthday on January 9, 2021.