Ágnes Keleti

Biography

Between 1937 and 1956 she won the national championship ten times. She changed her surname to Keleti to sound more Hungarian. Considered a top prospect for the 1940 Olympics, both the 1940 and 1944 Games were cancelled due to World War II. Expelled from her gymnastics club in 1941 for being Jewish, she hastily married István Sárkány, a Hungarian gymnast who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, after hearing a rumour that married women were not sent to labour camps.

Keleti survived the war using a Christian girl's identity papers and working as a maid in a Hungarian village. Her mother and sister were saved with Swiss protection papers from diplomat Carl Lutz and possibly Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg; her father and other relatives were murdered by gassing at Auschwitz. During the Siege of Budapest in 1944–45, she collected bodies for mass graves each morning. After the war she played cello professionally and resumed training, winning the Hungarian championship in 1946 and the Central European title in 1947.

She qualified for the 1948 Olympics but missed them due to a torn ankle ligament. At the 1949 World University Games she won four gold, one silver, and one bronze medal. She divorced Sárkány in 1950.

Awards and honours

Keleti entered the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981, followed by the Hungarian Sports Hall of Fame in 1991, the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 2001, and the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2002. She won the Herzl Prize for sports in 1982.

Hungary named her one of its twelve 'Athletes of the Nation' in 2004. An asteroid discovered in 2005, 265594 Keletiágnes, was named after her. She received the Israel Prize in sports in 2017.