Holocaust survivor and oldest living Olympic medal winner Ágnes Keleti dies aged 103

Ágnes Keleti, a Holocaust survivor and the oldest living Olympic medal winner, has died aged 103 in Budapest.

Hungarian state media reported Keleti died on Thursday morning, after being hospitalised with pneumonia on Christmas Day.

Keleti's Olympic gymnastics career saw her win ten medals for Hungary at the 1952 Helsinki Games and 1956 Melbourne games, including five golds.

Born Ágnes Klein in 1921 in Budapest, her career was interrupted by World War II and the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics. She survived the Holocaust by assuming a false identity and working as a maid in the Hungarian countryside.

Her mother and sister survived the war with the help of famed Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, but her father and other relatives perished at Auschwitz, among the more than half a million Hungarian Jews killed in Nazi death camps.

She went on to become one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes.

Her hopes of competing in the 1948 London Games were dashed by an ankle injury, but she made her debut in the 1952 Games when she was 31, winning a gold medal, a silver and two bronzes.

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In 1956, she became the most successful athlete at the Melbourne Olympics, winning four gold and two silver medals.

While she was becoming the oldest gold medalist in gymnastics history at age 35 in Melbourne, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary following an unsuccessful anti-Soviet uprising.

Keleti remained in Australia and sought political asylum. She then immigrated to Israel the following year and worked as a trainer and coached the Israeli Olympic gymnastics team until the 1990s.

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