Ágnes Keleti

Ágnes Keleti
Keleti (right) training a student at the Wingate Institute in Israel
Personal information
Full name	Ágnes Keleti
Country represented	Hungary
Born	(1921-01-09) 9 January 1921 Budapest, Hungary
Spouse	István Sárkány
Discipline	Women's artistic gymnastics
Level	Senior international
Retired	1958
Medal record Women's gymnastics Olympic Games 1952 Helsinki Floor exercise 1956 Melbourne Uneven bars 1956 Melbourne Balance beam 1956 Melbourne Floor exercise 1956 Melbourne Team, Portable 1952 Helsinki Team 1956 Melbourne All-around 1956 Melbourne Team 1952 Helsinki Uneven bars 1952 Helsinki Team, Portable World Championships 1954 Rome Uneven bars 1954 Rome Team 1954 Rome Balance beam

Ágnes Keleti (born Ágnes Klein, 9 January 1921) is a Hungarian-Israeli retired artistic gymnast and coach. While representing Hungary in the Summer Olympics, she won 10 Olympic medals including five gold medals, and is considered to be one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes of all time. She was the most successful athlete at the 1956 Summer Olympics. In 1957, Keleti emigrated to Israel, where she currently resides.

Career

Keleti is Jewish, and was born in Budapest, Hungary. She began gymnastics at the age of 4 and, by 16, was the Hungarian National Champion in gymnastics. Over the course of her career, between 1937 and 1956, she won the Championships title ten times. Keleti was considered a top prospect for the Hungarian team at the 1940 Olympics, but the escalation of World War II canceled both the 1940 and the 1944 Games. A member of the Jewish faith, Keleti was forced to go into hiding to survive the war. Because she had heard a rumor that married women were not taken to labor camps, she hastily married Istvan Sarkany in 1944. Sarkany was a Hungarian gymnast of the 1930s who achieved national titles and took part in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. They divorced in 1950. Keleti survived the war by purchasing and using Christian papers and working as a maid in a small village. Her mother and sister went into hiding and were saved by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Her father died in Auschwitz.

After the war, Keleti resumed training. She qualified for the 1948 Summer Olympics, but missed the competition due to injury. She continued training and finally competed at the Olympics for the first time at the age of 31 at the 1952 Games. She earned four medals: gold in the floor exercise, silver in the team competition, and bronze in the team portable apparatus event and the uneven bars. Keleti continued on to the 1954 World Championships, where she placed first on the uneven bars. At the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Keleti won gold medals in three of the four individual event finals: floor, bars, and balance beam and placed second in the all-around. The Hungarian team placed first in the portable apparatus event and second in the team competition. At the age of 35, Keleti became the oldest female gymnast ever to win gold.

The Soviet Union invaded Hungary during the 1956 Olympics. Keleti, along with 44 other athletes from the Hungarian delegation, decided to remain in Australia and received political asylum. Keleti emigrated to Israel in 1957 and was able to send for her mother and sister. Following her retirement from competition, Keleti worked as a physical education instructor at Tel Aviv University and the Wingate Institute for Sport in Netanya. She also coached and worked with Israel's national gymnastics team well into the 1990s. Keleti was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981, the Hungarian Sports Hall of Fame in 1991, and the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2002.

See also

• List of Eastern Bloc defectors
• List of Jews in sports
• List of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games
• List of Olympic female gymnasts for Hungary
• List of top Olympic gymnastics medalists

External links

• Ágnes Keleti at the International Gymnastics Federation
• List of competitive results
• Archived 2004-09-08 at the Wayback Machine