Ágnes Keleti

Ágnes Keleti was born Ágnes Klein in Budapest and was Hungarian gymnastics champion at 16. In 1940 she was thrown out of her club because she was Jewish. When the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944 she bought identity papers from a Christian girl, went to a village in the countryside and worked as a maid, and survived by pretending to be someone else. Her father and other relatives were murdered at Auschwitz. Her mother and sister survived in one of the safe houses set up by the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.

After the war she went back to the gym. She was picked for the 1948 Olympics but tore a ligament just before the Games and could not compete. She was 31 by the time of the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, an age at which most gymnasts have long retired, and she won gold on the floor along with three other medals.

In Melbourne in 1956, at 35, she won four more golds and two silvers, and she remains the oldest female gymnast to win an Olympic title. While she was competing, the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian uprising. She did not go home. She stayed in Australia, then settled in Israel in 1957, where she coached the national team for decades and taught physical education.

She returned to live in Budapest in her nineties and died there in January 2025, aged 103.