For many years, Israel’s role in international sports was an afterthought. Then, thirty years ago, the country began its unprecedented rise to prominence on the Olympic stage in a variety of unexpected competitions. This is the history of Israel’s rise to relevance in international sports, and the story of how the Jewish state continues to turn its top athletes into history-makers in the world’s premier competitions.
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From Tragedy to Triumph: Israel’s History at the Olympic Games
Israel’s Olympic journey began in 1952, when the young nation for the first time sent 25 athletes to Helsinki, Finland. However, its early history at the competition was mired in tragedy. At the 1972 games in Munich, West Germany, eleven Israeli athletes were held hostage and murdered by members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. After the crisis was over, the surviving members of the Israeli Olympic team left, and all remaining Jewish competitors were placed under guard.
Israel ended its first ten Olympic games without a participant taking home a medal. But at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, everything changed. Yael Arad, currently the President of Israel’s Olympic Committee, became the first Israeli to ever win an Olympic medal when she took silver in the half middleweight judo competition. She dedicated her prize to the eleven Israelis who were murdered two decades earlier in Munich.
Arad’s medal, along with Oren Smadja’s bronze — also in judo — signified a new age and direction for Israel in sport. It demonstrated the resolve of a country that overcame the darkest of moments just twenty years beforehand. It also helped spark the rise in popularity of judo, which has produced six of Israel’s thirteen total Olympic medals.
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Indeed, 1992 was a major turning point in Israel’s Olympic history. Since the Barcelona games, Israeli athletes have reached the international pinnacle of several competitions, accumulating nine bronze, one silver and three gold medals in total. Israel’s first gold medal came at the 2004 summer games in Athens, when Gal Fridman windsurfed into the history books. He also took home bronze in the men’s sailboard event in Atlanta in 1996, and is still the only Israeli to win multiple Olympic medals. Shahar Tzuberi, whose uncle escaped the Munich Massacre in 1972, also medaled as a windsurfer, taking bronze in Beijing in 2008.
Kayaking is another competition where Israelis have risen to the top; In 2000, Michael Kolganov won bronze in the men’s K-1 500 meters kayaking event.
Through the years, the impact of Israel’s Olympic medal breakthrough in 1992 has transformed the nation into a judo powerhouse. The Jewish state’s next Olympic triumph in judo came in 2004 through Ariel Zeevi, and twelve years later in Rio de Janeiro, Yarden Gerbi and Or Sasson both took home bronze, solidifying Israel as a consistent force in the competition.
The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo proved to be Israel’s most successful Olympics to date, with the nation tallying four medals and multiple gold medals at the same games for the first time in history. Unsurprisingly, Israel’s judo team won bronze at the mixed team event, in which men and women compete together. However, the nation opened many eyes when Artem Dolgopyat and Linoy Ashram won gold in gymnastics, and Avishag Samberg won bronze in taekwondo.
These are competitions in which Israelis had never medaled previously — and suddenly they became avenues for Israel to triple its gold medal count and make history.
In a matter of thirty years, Israel completely transformed its role on the biggest stage in international sport. Once a nation never viewed seriously at the Olympics, it now is a legitimate force in several competitions and is expanding its prowess to a variety of summer Olympic events.
The question is, how has such a small nation produced some of the top athletes in these specific competitions?
Israeli Olympian Avishag Samberg won a bronze medal in taekwondo!
We are so proud of you! 🇮🇱 #Olympics #OlympicGames pic.twitter.com/v9dfbuU8AH
— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) July 24, 2021
Immigration, Technology and Funding: Israel’s Strategic Approach to Olympic Success
In Israel, football (soccer), basketball and tennis have always been and continue to remain the nation’s most popular sports. And yet, these colossal sports have never produced medals for Israel on the Olympic stage, making way instead for more niche competitions. Why has a nation full of soccer and basketball players seen its top athletes on the podium for judo and gymnastics?
A combination of factors have accounted for this, and one of them is undoubtedly the large wave of immigration (“Aliyah”) that Israel has received in recent decades, specifically from the former Soviet Union. Kayaker Kolganov, for example, was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and began his sports career there when he was fourteen before moving to Israel at the age of 21.
Dolgopyat — the son of a gymnast — was born in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), Ukraine. He moved to Israel when he was twelve years old and joined the Maccabi Tel Aviv gymnastics team under the instruction of Russian-Israeli coach Sergey Vaisburg. Peter Paltchik, a member of Israel’s bronze-winning judo team at the 2020 Olympics and the former number-one ranked judoka in the world, was born in Yalta, Crimea (Ukraine).
Immigration from Russia has had a particular impact on the growing popularity of judo in Israel. In tandem with the buzz created by the medals won by Arad and Smadja in 1992, the influx of many Russian judokas who immigrated to Israel during that time frame has helped insert the sport into the mainstream. Legendary judo coaches such as Pavel Musin and Alex Ashkenazi have had tremendous impacts on the subsequent generations of Israeli judokas; Ashkenazi in particular coached Zeevi, who won bronze for Israel in 2004.
Related Reading: The Israeli Story of Aliyah
Another major component of Israel’s growing status on the Olympic stage is its funding strategy and tactful allocation of resources. Compared to many larger nations, Israel does not allocate as much funding towards its Olympians, nor does it have nearly as large of a population pool to produce top athletes. However, Israel’s particular funding strategy, inspired by the strategic success of other nations such as Great Britain, has been paramount to its relative medal output in recent years.
According to Yael Arad, who spoke on the matter at the Jerusalem Post London Conference in March 2022, Israel allocates eighty percent of its Olympic budget to the top twenty percent of its athletes “because we have learned that success comes by giving more support to sports in which we believe we can succeed.”
Israel’s prospective Olympians are divided into four tiers based on ability, and these categories correspond to the amount of funding they receive. The gold tier, an extremely small and selective group, receives the most funding, while the silver, bronze, and senior tiers receive less funding in descending order. For example, the 2016 gold tier consisted of only five athletes. This strategy gives athletes at the top of the pyramid the resources they need to compete with the world’s best.
Finally, Israel’s growing success in sports can partly be attributed to its role as a leader in science and technology. In 2018, a partnership between the Israel Olympic Committee and the Technion University in Haifa led to the creation of the Israeli Olympic Sport Research Center. This scientific approach for Israel’s top athletes can allow them to figure out what exactly leads to the desired result in specific events. Meanwhile, new technology can make the difference in competitions where every second matters.
Overall, several factors have led to Israel’s growth in international sports. The nation will be watching the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris to see if its top athletes can add to this unique and ever-growing legacy.
Originally from Princeton, New Jersey, Aaron Silverstein is an English, Creative Writing and Philosophy student at Colgate University.
He is a Summer 2022 intern for HonestReporting.
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