A legend of world sports, written in the history of Slovenian sports as the competitor with the most successes at major international sports competitions, such as world championships and the Olympic Games.
He managed - as one of the few Slovenian athletes - to reach the very top of the world, where he was from the World Championships in Ljubljana in 1922 to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, when he rounded off and ended his competitive gymnastics career, with which he had been associated for more than twenty years, in the best and most beautiful way possible.
In total, he was among the top three twelve times in seven major world competitions, of which eight times first, six times second and six times third. At the Olympic Games alone, he won six medals, including two gold in Paris in 1924, one gold and two bronze in Amsterdam in 1928 and, to end his career, one silver in Berlin in 1936. All these successes and the medals he won still place him in the position of the most successful Slovenian gymnast and athlete of all time and a giant of world gymnastics.
The Olympian was born in Novo mesto, but lived in Maribor for 72 years. In the Olympic year of 1924, he graduated from the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana.
The people of Maribor also fondly remember him as a regular walker in the City Park. The sports hall "University Sports Center Leon Štukelj" and the Leon Štukelj Square are dedicated to his memory.
One of the most famous moments of his life is from 1996, when at the age of 97 he impressed US President Bill Clinton with his vitality at the opening of the Olympic Games in Atlanta (USA):
video recording of his performance at the opening