I have been and still am lucky with the oldest Olympic champions in the world. On September 23, 2013, I was able to drink champagne with Sándor Tarics, the water polo champion of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, who was celebrating his 100th birthday at the Belvedere on the coast of San Francisco Bay, and on Sunday I was able to embrace Ágnes Keleti on her 102nd th birthday, who has been considered the oldest Olympic gold medalist in the world for almost four years.
There must be something in the genes of people born on these 93,000 square kilometers, because it can no longer be a coincidence. Perhaps tenacity, the ability to fight, the will to live? The ingenuity with which they can withstand the most terrible storms in history?
Probably all together.
All to Ágnes Keleti – both the good and the worst – came out in his long life Methuselah. Born into a wealthy bourgeois family, he then had to go through the terrible period of persecution of the Jews, after 1945 he was one of the beneficiaries of the regime, but he still could not feel free, because he had not returned home from the Melbourne Olympics in ’56, and in his second country, the Holy Land, he created Israeli gymnastics. And today, for years now, he has lived in Budapest, first in Paulay Ede, and now in Október 6. utca. Where on Sunday we visited the sports elder and witnessed how the prominent personalities of our political and sports life shake hands.
We walked up the stairs together to the second floor apartment with Zsolt Gyulay, two-time Olympic champion president of the Hungarian Olympic Committee, Ádám Schmidt, state secretary responsible for sport, and Dániel Gyurta, Olympic champion, IOC member and chief adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The photographers were already inside with cameras ready to shoot, and of course there was Tamás Róth, who has practically organized the legendary sportsman’s public appearances and press events for years as manager of Ágnes Keleti. And let’s not forget Krisztián Berki, our Olympic champion gymnast, and Sándor Altorjai, general secretary of the Hungarian Gymnastics Federation. It is very probable that this apartment at Október 6. Street was at this time the place where the number of Olympic champions (4) and Olympic gold medalists (9) in the given area was the largest in the world…
One, two, three… eight, nine, ten men! – the celebrant looked at us. “So many men came to my birthday?” This is great!
Then the lords handed over the bouquets one by one, and Zsolt Gyulay, Ádám Schmidt, Dániel Gyurta, Krisztián Berki and Ágnes Keleti accepted the gifts of the faithful, like a monarch. In the meantime, one of his sons, Rafi, and Ádám Justín, a former great basketball player and president of the Maccabi Fencing and Athletics Club, also arrived.
After all, Ágnes Keleti is a hero of Hungarians and Jews, of Hungary and Israel, and also of universal, borderless humanity.
Then, during the day, the excellent biopic about her, the creator of Who Overcame Time, Kata Oláh and her husband, the representative of Csanádi Árpád Primary School, Sports School and Secondary School (where a classroom has been named after Ágnes Keleti), Anett Bősz, paid tribute to Ágnes Keleti during the day, the deputy mayor, the deputy mayor Kata Bedő of Újpest, and also the representative of the municipality of the center and UTE, Keleti’s former club. And, of course, Dezső Dobor, the author of the biographical book about Ágnes Keleti, was also present at the ceremony.
In the midst of the great comings and goings, I myself had a conversation with Linda, Ágnes Keleti’s nurse, because obviously the old woman needs care, at 102 she is no longer in full possession of her abilities.
“Imagine that last October you fell in your room at night and broke your femur
the nurse said.
– We were very scared, we immediately called an ambulance, we already feared the worst, because a broken bone in the elderly can easily be fatal. However, Ágika recovered as if nothing had happened, and I like to see how happy and cheerful she is. The life force that resides there is amazing!”
What can be added to this?
For example, when Zsolt Gyulay handed Ágnes Keleti the chocolate cake, on which three candles were lit, forming 1, 0 and 2, the celebrant read backwards:
Two… zero… one!
What does the reporter think? However strong, however healthy the old woman is, it is not even conceivable that even that anniversary is worth…
(Cover photo: MOB president Zsolt Gyulay and Ádám Schmidt, state secretary responsible for sport, greet Ágnes Keleti. Photo: Tamás Róth)
