Passing of Ágnes Keleti at 103

Passing of Ágnes Keleti at 103

by David Wallechinsky

Ágnes Keleti earned ten Olympic medals in gymnastics in the 1950s. Her medal total is greater than any Hungarian in any sport. Only fencer Aladár Gerevich has been able to match her total. She is the oldest female gymnast to win a gold medal in an individual event.

Born Ágnes Klein, Keleti was born in Budapest on 9 January 1921. She died in Budapest on 2 January 2025.

Keleti began practicing gymnastics when she was six years old. She became a member of the Hungarian national team in 1939 and won her first Hungarian championship in 1940. She had hoped to compete in the 1940 Olympics, but they were cancelled because of war, as were the Olympics of 1944. In the meantime, she was banned from competing in Hungary because she was Jewish.

Her father was sent by Germans to Auschwitz, where he and other members of their family died. Ágnes’ mother and her sister were saved by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Ágnes herself bought the identification of a young Christian woman and escaped to the countryside. She found work as a maid for a pro-Nazi Hungarian family that never learned she was Jewish. During the seven-week Battle of Budapest between the Soviets and the Germans in 1944-1945, she found extra work getting up early in the morning, gathering dead bodies and hauling them to mass graves.

When World War II ended, Keleti returned to gymnastics. She qualified for the Hungarian team for the 1948 Olympics, but while in London she injured her ankle in training and could not compete.

Finally, in 1952 in Helsinki, Keleti was able to take part in Olympic competition. She did so with style. She earned a gold medal in floor exercise, a silver in team all-around and two bronze medals in uneven bars and team portable apparatus. She was also fourth on the balance beam and sixth in individual all-around.

At the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Keleti earned four gold medals: uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise and team portable apparatus. She added silver medals in individual all-around and team all-around. She did all this at the age of 35. Because Hungary had been invaded by the Soviet Union, Keleti stayed behind in Australia and then moved to Israel the following year. In 2015, at age 94, Keleti returned to the country of her birth.

I interviewed Keleti in 2019 at her home in Budapest when she was 98 years old. She knew she was experiencing dementia. Ágnes flexed her muscles, grabbed my hand with a strong grip and told me (in Hungarian), “I have power, but no brain.”

She did stress that she liked gymnastics because it allowed her to see the world without costing any money. When I asked her what music she used for her floor exercise routine, she didn’t answer with words. Instead she hummed for us the Franz Liszt melody she had used more than sixty years earlier. She pulled me up and tried to dance with me, but she deemed me unable to carry out the standard Hungarian moves, so she pushed me aside and switched to a Hungarian journalist.

After the formal interview, I asked her the favorite place she had ever visited. She replied with enthusiasm, “Hollywood!”

Ágnes Keleti is survived by two sons, Daniel and Rafael. She said, “My children were two more gold medals.”

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