120th birthday of gymnastics legend Štukelj to be marked

The ceremony remembering the six-time Olympic medallist and five-time world champion at the emerging velodrome in Novo Mesto will be broadcast live by national television and addressed by President Borut Pahor.

It will be preceded by the opening of an exhibition on Štukelj, who in addition to being a top-class athlete was also a cosmopolitan and humanitarian. It will be on display at the Dolenjska Museum Novo Mesto, presenting his life and work.

Štukelj was born in 1898 in Rudolfovo, the name of Novo Mesto at the time, and died in 1999 in Maribor as the oldest living Olympic gold medallist at the time, four days short of his 101st birthday.

He was 26 when he won his first Olympic gold medal in Paris in 1924. He actually won two golds - in all-around and on the horizontal bar, which he followed up four years later in Amsterdam with the Olympic gold medal on the...