Israeli-Hungarian Agnes Keleti died on Thursday at age 103. She would have turned 104 next Thursday.
“These 100 years felt to me like 60,” Keleti told The Associated Press on the eve of her 100th birthday. “I live well. And I love life. It’s great that I’m still healthy.”
The Holocaust survivor, a five-time Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast (individual and team events), had Hungarian and Israeli citizenship. She performed full leg splits well into her 90s.
Born Agnes Klein in 1921, her career was interrupted by World War II due to the subsequent cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games.
She resumed her career after war but missed out on the 1948 London Games due to a last-minute ankle. Four years later, at 31, she clinched a gold medal in the floor exercise as well as a silver and two bronze at the 1952 Helsinki Games.
Keleti was awarded the Israel Prize in 2017 — country’s highest cultural award — and named Hungary’s “Athletes of the Nation” in 2004.