U.S. Athlete Now on Par with Hungarian Olympian, Ágnes Keleti’s Record

MTI-Hungary Today 2024.08.01.

Simone Biles.

The U.S. women’s gymnastics team won the team competition at the Paris Olympics with a remarkable performance. In addition, the sport’s biggest star of the moment, Simone Biles, received her eighth Olympic medal and fifth gold, the latter equaling the all-time third-placed Ágnes Keleti.

After the defending champions Russia were unable to attend due to the war in Ukraine, the world champions were the favorites and confidently prevailed. The United States won the team competition in Paris on Tuesday. It was Simone Biles’ eighth medal and fifth gold of the Olympic Games. The 27-year-old Biles is the oldest American gymnast to compete in a team event since 1950 and the only one to have won two team golds in three Olympics to go with her three individual ones. The U.S. women’s gymnastics team has reached the top step of the podium for the fourth time, after 1996, 2012 and 2016.

Biles’ latest victory puts her in illustrious company, as only six other gymnasts have won at least five golds:

Soviet Larisa Latynina has won nine, Czechoslovakia’s Věra Čáslavská seven, while the oldest living Olympic champion, Ágnes Keleti, Romania’s Nadia Comăneci, Soviet Polina Astakhova and Romania’s Nellie Kim have all stood on the top step of the podium five times.

The U.S. gymnast is unlikely to stop there, as she is expected to add to her medal collection in the individual and all-around finals.

Ágnes Keleti. Photo via Fortepan / Kovács Márton Ernő

However, it should be noted that in terms of medals, Ágnes Keleti is ahead of Simone Biles. The 103-year-old Hungarian gymnast, the most successful gymnast in the Hungarian history of the sport, won one gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and four gold medals at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. She also has three silver and two bronze medals from the two Olympic Games in the 1950s.

Fact

Ágnes Keleti competed at the Olympics for the first time at the age of 31 at the 1952 Games in Helsinki. At the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Keleti won six medals including gold medals in three of the four individual event finals: floor, bars, and balance beam, and placed second in the all-around. She was the most successful athlete at these games. At the age of 35, Keleti became the oldest female gymnast ever to win gold. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary during the 1956 Olympics. Along with 44 other athletes from the Hungarian delegation, she decided to remain in Australia and received political asylum.

Keleti emigrated to Israel in 1957. Following her retirement from competition, Keleti worked as a physical education instructor at Tel Aviv University, and for 34 years at the Wingate Institute for Sports in Netanya. She also coached and worked with Israel’s national gymnastics team well into the 1990s. She has been living in Budapest since 2015.

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Italians finished in second place, 5.802 points behind the Americans, with the Brazilians taking the bronze medal.

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Via MTI, Mandiner; Featured image via Facebook/Simone Biles