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The world’s oldest Olympic champion and Holocaust survivor, Agnes Keleti is dead.
Agnes Keleti died at Budapest hospital on Thursday at 103.
Her press official Tamas Roth said she was hospitalised with pneumonia a week ago.
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Rafael Biro-Keleti, her son told local press: “We pray for her, she has a great vitality,” adding that they would like to celebrate her 104th birthday together as a family on January 9th.
She was the oldest living Olympic Champion.
Keleti’s life story, including surviving the Holocaust and Olympic glory, reads like a gripping Hollywood film script, with her feisty spirit never breaking in the face of adversity. As Hungary’s most successful gymnast, she won ten Olympic medals, all of them after reaching the age of 30 against much younger competitors, including five gold medals in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956).
Her motivation to do sports was not to chase glory, but to travel abroad, outside the Iron Curtain from the communist-ruled Hungary. “I was competing not because I liked it but I did it because I wanted to see the world,” she told AFP in 2016.
In other news, Super Eagles goalkeeper Stanley Nwabali has announced the death of his mother, The Eastern Updates reports.
Nwabali announced the unfortunate incident on social media on Wednesday.
“A very very crazy world indeed; RIP mom, worst year of my life already,” the 28-year-old wrote on X.
The Eastern Updates recalls the Chippa United shot-stopper lost his father on November 15, 2024.
Nwabali was excused from Nigeria’s 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying fixture against Rwanda because of the sad incident.
