The oldest Olympic champion in the world who survived the Holocaust has died.

The oldest Olympic champion from Hungary has died

The world's oldest Olympic champion Agnès Keleti has passed away at the age of 103. This was reported citing AFP.

The gymnast was hospitalized with pneumonia, but she died on January 2 in a Budapest hospital. Earlier, her son Raphael Biro-Keleti told commentators that the family planned to celebrate Agnès' 104th birthday on January 9.

Keleti was a successful gymnast from Hungary who trained to escape her country, which was under communist control.

“I participated [in competitions] not because I liked it, but because I wanted to see the world,” she said in an interview with the publication in 2016.

In 1940, she was banned from sports due to her Jewish heritage. However, after the occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany, she managed to avoid deportation to a death camp. She obtained false documents by exchanging them for all her belongings and posed as a young Christian woman. Her father and some relatives were killed in Auschwitz, but her mother and sister survived.

Up until the age of 30, Keleti won ten Olympic medals, surpassing her young competitors. She became an Olympic champion five times, including in Helsinki in 1952 and Melbourne in 1956.

In the following years, she moved to Israel, where she worked as a physical education teacher, coached the national team, and started a family. It wasn't until 2015 that Agnès returned to her homeland.

In 2021, Thomas Bach, then-president of the International Olympic Committee, commemorated Agnès Keleti's 100th birthday.