Oldest Olympic champ Tarics dies at 102

Hungarian Olympic waterpolo champion Sandor Tarics has died aged 102 in the US.

Berlin Olympics - 1936

The Hungarian water polo team which won gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Sandor Tarics is second from the right. Source: Getty Images

The world's oldest Olympic champion, Hungarian waterpolo player Sandor Tarics, has died aged 102 in San Francisco.

Tarics was member of the Hungarian waterpolo team who won in the Berlin Olympics staged by the Nazi government in 1936, pushing Germany into second place.

He left Soviet-occupied Hungary to settle in the United States in 1949 and earned fame in his new home country as a designer of earthquake-proof building technologies.

At the age of over 100, Tarics still drove his car with California licence plate `Gold36'.

He swam, worked on solving mathematical problems and monitored sports news in Hungary, he said in a interview with the Hungarian Olympic Committee's website late last year.

He attended the 2012 London Olympics as the oldest living champion.

When asked in the interview if he would also attend the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he said: "We will see, it is hard to plan things so much forward."


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