Ágnes Keleti, world's oldest Olympic gold champion, dies aged 103

The world's oldest Olympic gold-medallist, the Hungarian gymnast Ágnes Keleti, who escaped the Holocaust with false identity papers and the Soviet Union's brutal clampdown on her home country by emigrating to Israel, has died aged 103.

- Jon Henley

Keleti, who did not compete in an Olympics until she was 31 but won more gold and silver medals than anyone else at the Melbourne Games, died yesterday in Budapest, where she had returned to live in 2015, the Hungarian Olympic Committee said.

The International Olympic Committee said: "Ágnes Keleti is the greatest gymnast produced by Hungary, but one whose life and career were intertwined with the politics of her country and her religion."

Besides being the oldest female gymnast to win Olympic gold, Keleti's 10 medals, including five golds, rank her as the second most successful Hungarian athlete of all time. She was also one of the three most successful Jewish Olympians.

Born into a Jewish family as Ágnes Klein on 9 January 1921, Keleti took up music and gymnastics as a child, becoming an accomplished - and later a professional - cello player and winning her first national gymnastics championship aged 16.