Ágnes Keleti

Born Ágnes Klein in Budapest on 9 January 1921, she trained as a gymnast until the war tore her life open; she survived in hiding while her father perished. When she finally reached the Olympics, she was already in her thirties - ancient by gymnastics standards - yet between 1952 and 1956 she collected ten Olympic medals for Hungary, five of them gold. At the 1956 Melbourne Games she was the meet's most decorated athlete. The following year, as Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, Keleti made a different choice: she immigrated to Israel, became a coach, and built a second life. She returned to Hungary in 2015 at ninety-four, received the Israel Prize in 2017, and lived to see her hundredth birthday. She died a week later, on 2 January 2025, the oldest Olympic champion the world had known.