The world's oldest living Olympic champion, Agnes Keleti, spoke to SNTV as she turned 99-years-old on Thursday 9 Jan . Keleti is the oldest living Olympic champion and a Holocaust survivor - she won 10 medals in gymnastics - including five golds - at the 1952 Helsinki Games and at the 1956 Melbourne Games.
Still, speaking on the eve of her birthday at her elegant apartment in downtown Budapest, Keleti hardly wanted to mention her achievements and her long life, which includes adventures and great accomplishments, but also heartbreak and tragedy.
Keleti’s family was decimated during the Holocaust, which she survived thanks in part to assuming a false identity and working as a maid. While her mother and sister also survived, her father and uncles perished at Auschwitz and were among the 550,000 Hungarian Jews killed in Nazi death camps, Hungarian forced labour battalions, ghettos or shot to death into the Danube River.
Even her Olympic memories seem to centre not on her athletic prowess - among Jewish athletes, only American swimmers Mark Spitz and Dara Torres have won more Olympic medals - but rather on the travel opportunities her sporting career offered.
After living for decades in Israel where she taught gymnastics before returning a few years ago to Budapest, Keleti said the most important thing children should learn is "the joy of life."
The 99-year-old has been given a long series of prestigious awards in Hungary and Israel, including being one of Hungary's 12 "Athletes of the Nation" since 2004 and getting the Israel Prize, considered that state's highest honour, in 2017. But, as with her Olympic medals, she doesn't seem impressed by the recognition of her successes.
