Ágnes Keleti: Hungary's Most Decorated Olympian Lives On!

In difficult times, it can help to look to the lives of inspiring people for hope and spirited optimism. Those who lived through turbulence, through the unimaginable, and thrived. Hungary has no shortage of such figures. One who deserves the world’s attention is Ágnes Keleti, an Olympic gymnast and Holocaust survivor. 

Keleti, still vivacious at the age of 99, is Hungary’s most decorated Olympic living athlete, with ten medals to her name (famed Hungarian fencer Aladár Gerevich also won ten). Notably, many of these medals were won after the age of 30, a real rarity in gymnastics, which is particularly youth dominated. 

A talented athlete as a child, Budapest-born Keleti’s future seemed assured, until WWII broke out when she was just 18. Being Jewish, she was only able to survive with falsified papers, and by pretending she was a peasant from the countryside. For much of the war, she worked as a maid, staying under the radar of authorities. During the Siege of Budapest, Keleti spent free time volunteering by collecting bodies and delivering them to mass graves. Though her mother and sister were saved by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, her father perished in a concentration camp.

Keleti would not be able to compete in an Olympics until 1952 at Helsinki. At that point she was 31. There, she won a silver medal and two bronze medals. Then, in 1956, she won no less than four gold medals, and two silver. 

Keleti happened to be in Melbourne when the Soviets violently shut down a Hungarian uprising in Budapest. She applied for, and was granted, asylum. From there she moved to Israel, where she developed their national female gymnastics program. Keleti is considered the grandmother of competitive Israeli gymnastics, training young female gymnasts for success. There, she was known for being exacting and demanding. She told the Times of Israel, “I drove myself hard. I drove the girls I taught hard, too. It’s the only way to get performance. Being nice and motherly doesn’t do it.”

Keleti did eventually move back to Hungary and Budapest. According to the Times article, she lives quietly with a caretaker, and a collection of orchids. May Ágnes Keleti live on and prosper, and continue to set an example of perseverance to all of us.

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