On the eve of the Tokyo Olympics, which opened Friday, eight Israel athletes Israel had won nine Olympic medals. Five of those medals came in judo, three in windsurfing and one in kayaking. Out of those nine medals, only one was colored gold, and another silver. The seven remaining medals were all bronze. With the exception of London 2012, Israel has won at least one medal at every Games since 1992.
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Yael Arad won Israel's first Olympic medal, a silver, competing in the half-middleweight (-61-kilogram) judo category. The bout took place on July 30, 1992, 40 years after Israel first participated in the Olympic Games. The following day, judoka Oren Smadja took Israel's second medal, a bronze in the lightweight (-71 kg) category.
Israel's sole gold medal thus far was claimed by windsurfer Gal Fridman at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Fridman is the only Israel to have won two Olympic medals, claiming bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Michael Kolganov won bronze in the K-1 500 meters kayak race at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Judoka Arik Ze'evi took bronze in the half-heavyweight (100 kg) category at Athens 2004; Windsurfer Shahar Tzuberi took bronze in the 2008 Beijing Olympics; judoka Yarden Gerbi took bronze in the women's 63g weight class, and three days later Or Sasson took bronze in the men's +100kg category.
Shortly before the opening ceremony, we spoke with the Israeli medal winners to try and understand how breaking through the glass ceiling and winning a medal changed their lives. All of them noted that winning a medal was the result of years of hard work that exacted a heavy physical and mental cost. Four of the medal winners are in Tokyo: Or Sasson (30), the only Israeli Olympic medalist still actively competing, was busy over the past few weeks in intensive preparation for the competition; Oren Smadja is there as coach of the men's team; Yael Arad as head of the professional team of the Olympic Committee of Israel; and Arik Ze'evi, who is in Japan as a commentator for the Sports Channel.
After decades of minimal investment and low achievements, in the past four Olympics, Israel's athletes have received professional backing in all fields, enabling them to reach the Games in optimal condition. Israel has invested an estimated NIS 200 million in preparing for Tokyo. The Israeli delegation of 90 athletes is huge in local terms and Israel's largest ever, mostly due to the 25-member baseball team. It is the first time Israel has had a team in any ballgame since the 1976 Montreal Olympics, when Israel's soccer team participated.
Israel's athletes will also enjoy generous grants if they come back with medals. Gold medal winners will receive 500,000 shekels ($153,000), while their professional team will receive NIS 350,000 ($107,000). Silver medalists will get NIS 400,000 ($123,000), and their teams will share another NIS 280,000 ($86,000); while bronze medalists will receive NIS 250,000 ($76,000) and their professional team another NIS 175,000 $53,000).
The Olympic Committee of Israel takes pride in the fact that Israel is one of the world's leading countries in terms of bonuses for its medal-winning men and women, and it's right. The average gold medal bonus in Western countries is around NIS 200,000. Singapore tops the charts with a bonus of $740,000, and Taiwan follows with $640,000. But the generous bonuses haven't turned Israel into an Olympic superpower. Western countries prefer to invest greater sums in sporting infrastructure, thus increasing the overall pool of medals.
Arad, 54, says that as a young judoka, she was taught to lose with honor. "No one really spoke about winning. Whatever we achieved was okay, but there was no target on the wall."
Arad trained with Maccabi Tel Aviv, and in 1977, when she was 10 years old, Maccabi's basketball team won the European championship for the first time. That was her inspiration.
When she was 16, Arad decided she wanted to be the best in the world. "I was at a big training camp in Europe where I saw 'old ladies' of 25 who were world and European champions. That was my first encounter with the world's best. I looked at them and saw that they were flesh and blood just like me. But I understood that I needed to switch from a regime of one-and-a-half hours training a day to three hours a day just like them."
Q: Did you come to Barcelona expecting to win a medal?
"Yes. I was the world number three. In February 1992, six months before the Olympics, I was crowned champion at the Paris tournament. In the Olympic semi-final I beat Frauke Eickhoff of Germany, and then it was clear that I would win a medal."
Arad's disappointment after losing the final on points showed clearly on her face when she went up on the podium to claim her silver medal in Barcelona. She had hoped to see the Israeli flag hoisted and to hear the national anthem, Hatikvah, and she came so close. But Israel celebrated its first Zionist medal, achieved 40 years after its first Olympics. It took Arad a few days to understand just what a big occasion it was.
She was swamped by the Israeli media who waited on her every word. The heads of the Israeli delegation were in ecstasy. "I wasn't given much time to be disappointed, because everyone had plans for me. I received calls to come back to Israel immediately because the papers wanted to do a celebratory interview with me, but I wanted to stay and carry the Israeli flag at the closing ceremony."
Arad, the daughter of two journalists, was already a young woman with a strong awareness of the world. Before the games, she met with the widows of the Israeli athletes murdered in Munich and promised them that if she won a medal, she would dedicate it to their memory. When the International Olympic Committee held a big press conference, Arad arrived prepared with a speech she had written in honor of the 11 Israeli victims of the Munich massacre.
When she returned home, Arad was received like a Hollywood movie star. "When I was still in Barcelona, my parents told me how ecstatic everyone was in Israel. When we landed, the plane taxied right past the VIP hall, and I could see all the people who had accompanied me from childhood waiting for me there. A few days later, I met the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at his bureau." They spoke about the competition and Rabin told Arad he had watched the final from his bureau.
Q: What did the medal do for you?
"The main thing was a sense of self-fulfillment. When you achieve a major goal, the significance isn't necessarily financial. Ask the people at Mobileye how they feel. As soon as I touched the big dream, I felt whole. It enables you to live life well on the emotional level, with enormous confidence."
Arad retired from the sport in 1994 in order to be close to her ailing father after winning the European Championships and coming in second at the World Champions in the year after the Games. She returned to compete in Atlanta in 1996, but lost in the bronze medal fight and finished fifth.
Q: You ended your career with very strong public recognition
"But not like a reality TV star," she jokes. "There was strong recognition from the public and from decision makers who were full of appreciation."
Arad put the world of judo behind her and switched to the business world. "Opening doors wasn't a problem, but I had to transition to a new world and think about what I will be, and not what I had been."
Today, Arad is an entrepreneur and a consultant to companies in the fields of gaming and children's TV series. For the past nine years, she has been part of the elite sports unit at the Wingate Institute and says that since she won her medal Israel has taken an enormous leap forward in developing its Olympic athletes.
Before the1992 Barcelona Olympics, then-Deputy Sports Minister Pinchas Goldstein established a fund for Israeli medal winners. Goldstein recruited the diamond trader Simcha Holtzman, and half a million shekels were allocated for each winner. When Arad and Smadja won their medals, the Olympic Committee of Israeli doubled the amount to NIS 1 million ($307,000).
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Shahar Tzuberi found himself the only remaining Israeli medal hope. "All the Israelis who have been considered medal contenders had already been knocked out, and from the Israeli Olympic committee's perspective, I was potential for a third to sixth place," he recalls.
Ahead of the final race of the competition, the medal race, Zuberi was placed fourth and in order to win a medal he needed to overtake one of the three windsurfers ahead of him in the rankings - from New Zealand, France and the United Kingdom. Ahead of the decisive race, he was certain that he had been disqualified, but when he rounded the first buoy, he saw that he was in third place and strongly in contention. He placed second in the race and dramatically jumped up the rankings to end up third overall and claim the bronze medal.
When I ask him how much the medal had changed his life, Tzuberi answers instinctively: "A lot."
"I was a kid from Eilat and Eilat is a small place," he explains. "If you stand out there you instantly become well-known. When I started to win races, the local press was full of articles about me. So even before I won a medal, I was a well-known sportsman, with a very supportive environment.
"But then I was out of my local bubble and it spread all around the country. In the two years before Beijing, I was already competing seriously at adult level and taking part in Olympic trials. When I moved from Eilat to the center of the country, interest in me spread to a national level."
Tzuberi, 34, was only 22 years old when he won his medal. He may have been the best rewarded Israel athlete at the Games, but his bonus was just NIS 92,000 ($28,000). Nevertheless, at the end of the day, he is believed to have raked in around half a million shekels, which helped him buy an apartment in Eilat. He signed a contract with Renault which gave him a new car for two years and an annual salary of NIS 230,000 ($70,000) as a presenter.
In the two years following the Beijing Olympics, he won the European Championship. The prize money and stipends helped him maintain an optimal training regime, spend a lot of time overseas, and enjoy a comfortable bachelor lifestyle. He competed in London in 2012, finishing 19th.
After London, Tzuberi enrolled at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya to study Government and Diplomacy ("I studied to widen my horizons, and to be able to make a living beyond windsurfing and sports. I knew that one day I would need additional tools.") Tzuberi took a break from his studies to prepare for Rio 2016, where he finished in 17th place. After the Games, he went on to finish his degree. In 2018, he married Liat, and a year later their first daughter Niv was born. Today he lives with his family in the Ramat Aviv Gimel neighborhood in North Tel Aviv.
At the last world championship in Spain, Tzuberi placed only 14th, and two-and-a-half months ago, national team coach Gur Steinberg decided that 21-year-old Yoav Cohen, the 2020 European champion, who placed 5th in Spain, was in better form, and selected him to represent Israel in Tokyo.
Q: What did you make of that decision?
"I dealt with it between me and myself. I knew that once the decision had been made there was no point fighting it. That wouldn't have been right for me, for Yoav, or for the team."
Some of the passers-by at the commercial center in Ramat Aviv Gimel recognize Tzuberi - others don't. "I'm not famous enough to lose my privacy, and I like it like that. On the other hand, I do enjoy being recognized. People had 'their fingers crossed' for me, and ask for selfies but in the right measure."
Tzuberi says that part of the Olympic experience for him was meeting sporting legends at the Olympic village. In Beijing he saw tennis stars Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, and ex Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball star Sarunas "Saras" Jasikevicius who was there with the Lithuanian hoops team ("he even recognized me")
In Tokyo, Tzuberi is working as a commentator for the Sports Channel. His biggest dream is to return to his home town of Eilat and to take on a managerial role at the local surfing and sailing club. Before he does that though, he will have to persuade his wife Liat, a former parliamentary adviser and now a senior executive with a subsidiary of the construction giant, Ashtrom Group.
Q: Could a managerial role include the mayorship of Eilat?
"I'm not ruling out anything. At the moment we are happy where we are, and I'm making sure that my kid goes barefoot a lot, just like I used to."
Five years after making Aliyah on his own from Uzbekistan, Michael Kolganov represented Israel at the Sydney Olympics. He left behind his parents and a brother, and his absorption process was not an easy one. Last week he told Israel Hayom reporter Nir Wolf how when he first came to Israel he found himself training in the dirty and polluted waters of the Kishon River, and how he came close to despair. But by the time of the Sydney Games, he was a candidate for a medal, with all the public pressure involved, after doing well at the world championships.
The then-26-year-old Kolganov led the 500-meter event almost all the way, but tired toward the end. He finished third to claim bronze. Like Yael Arad, he refused to be consoled, believing that he had been worthy of gold. But the reception he received in Israel, along with a phone call from Prime Minister Ehud Barak, helped soften the blow.
Kolganov went on to compete in the Athens and Beijing Olympics, but failed to duplicate his achievement from Sidney. He was the flag bearer for the Israeli delegation at Beijing 2008, but from there on his public recognition declined, perhaps because he wasn't a native-born Israeli and didn't have family support and network of connections to help leverage his career, and perhaps it was because he lived in the north of the country, far from the wealthier central region, where everything happens.
Kolganov was connected to the Israel Beiteinu party, which promised that it would establish a strong water sports infrastructure on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Later, MK Faina Kirschenbaum set him up with a job as a student coordinator for the Ayalim NGO. But Kolganov never saw a cent from that. By then, Kolganov already had two children, and with a family to support found himself working as a lifeguard on the beaches of Lake Kinneret.
Of all Israel's Olympic medallists, Kolganov is the one who really didn't make it into the public spotlight. He never appeared in advertisements, and took in only around NIS 100,000 from his Olympic medal. "All my medals, including the Olympic one, are stored in a bag in the cupboard," says Kolganov, "I think when I'm 67 I will send them to the National Insurance Institute and perhaps I'll get another 200-3000 shekels to add on the pension I don't have."
I met with Arik Ze'evi, 44, in his home neighborhood in north Tel Aviv just as he returned from conducting selection bouts for his pet project, the Maccabi Rafael Tel Aviv judo dojo, which this year won the Israeli national team championships for kids up to sixth grade, and also took several medals among the sixth to 8th graders category. Some 90 kids from third grade and up train at Ze'evi 's new judo club.
Ze'evi also runs another judo dojo in Tel Aviv with around 70 kids. He has been running his Hadar Yosef club for the past three years ever since ending his term as manager of the Israeli youth team after a highly publicized split with Israel senior's coach Oren Smadja. Ze'evi however isn't interested in talking about the past, only the future. Even after all these years, and all the titles and honors he has won, it is incredible to see the light in his eyes when he talks about judo.
Q: Is winning Olympic medals an Israeli obsession?
"Every athlete feels they need to win an Olympic medal as a final seal of approval. [Windsurfer] Lee Korzitz was a four-time world champion but failed to win an Olympic medal. From a professional point of view, world championships are stronger competition, but the Olympics have a certain glory of their own – it's a bigger competition with media from the athlete's home country and from all over the world, and enormous exposure for sports that usually hardly get a mention in the papers."
Ze'evi came close to a medal in Sydney 2000, but ended up fifth due to a refereeing error. He arrived in Athens 2004 as the favorite for gold after having been crowned three times as European champion.
Q: How much pressure was on you to get a medal?
"A lot of pressure. A few months before Athens I picked up an eye infection, which didn't heal until a month after the Games when I was in India and the pressure had subsided. If you take a close look at pictures from the time, you will see me on the podium with one eye half shut. The pressure on me made me sluggish, I didn't feel at all fresh, I had a huge weight on my shoulders. Do you remember the 1998 World Cup final in soccer when Brazil faced Italy? Brazil's top star, Ronaldo, collapsed mentally; I didn't understand why it had happened. But when I was in Athens I thought about him, and I understood what it feels like to have half a country on your back."
Ze'evi wasn't talking about the rush of Israeli fans to the judo hall in Athens. Fans travelling to support a specific athlete isn't really part of Olympic culture, but Israelis filled the judo halls with flags and colorful decorations, and the pressure grew even higher, impacting Ze'evi 's performance in the last two bouts.
In the 2004 quarterfinals, Ze'evi faced a South Korean opponent: "I had him on the floor after 30 seconds," recalls Ze'evi . "The Spanish referee ruled ippon [a winning move] but the two other assisting referees changed the decision to waza-ari [the second-highest score in judo]. I continued to lead the bout, but with a minute to go I fell on my side. The referee shouted waza-ari, but the assistant referees changed the decision to ippon. Perhaps it was just a coincidence but the head of the world judo federation at the time was a Korean tycoon."
Ze'evi competed in the repechage round and won the bronze. For six days he basked in the glory of being Israel's only medal winner in Athens, until windsurfer Gal Friedman came along and won gold.
"Looking back with the perspective of time, only those close to you remember the details. A lot of times when I'm giving a lecture, I am presented as an Olympic champion, and I have to put the record straight. Does anyone remember how many times Cristiano Ronaldo was top goal scorer or how many championships he won? People just remember him as Ronaldo."
Q: Did you get a lot of sponsorship deals after the medal?
"There were several big companies that publicized that they had supported me and given me all sorts of gifts. Bottom line, very little happened, but my agent, Rafi Agiv, wasn't shy and called all the companies who had used my name and asked for the products for me. I got a wonderful bed from Hollandia, and Johnson & Johnson sent me a cosmetics package worth thousands of shekels that I had no use for so I gave everything away as presents to girlfriends."
The adoration for Ze'evi , at the time a desirable bachelor, grew even stronger after his medal win. On one website he was voted the world's sexiest athlete, ahead of David Beckham. His main sponsor, the Migdal insurance company, gave him a monthly stipend of NIS 20,000, while the Olympic Committee of Israel also gave him a stipend and a car. Ze'evi felt like a millionaire. Over the years, Migdal is estimated to have spent in the region of two million shekels sponsoring the judo star.
Ze'evi still remembers picking up the papers one day and seeing a picture of soccer star Yossi Benayoun taking up all of the front pages of the sports section on the edition after he had just won the European championship - an achievement that was covered in barely two sentences. "At the time, the public was barely aware of Olympic sports. There was no correlation between my achievements and the effort I put in, and the amount of media exposure I received. It was very frustrating."
The bitter end to Ze'evi 's career came exactly 43 seconds into his first bout in London 2012 against an opponent he had already beaten four times.
"I was the reigning European champion, but I ended up losing to someone against whom I held a 4-1 record. I failed. But slowly-slowly I understood that people identify with disappointments and with growth emerging from failure. Many people are afraid to chase after their dream, because they are afraid of failure."
At the end of the day, Ze'evi 's story enabled him to develop his business and expand his exposure. He currently lectures around 15 times a month to organizations, large companies and army commanders. He run a very successful judo club, is married with three children, and always has a smile on his face.
Judoka Oren Smadja, 51, won Israel's second-ever medal the day after Yael Arad won the country's first. Journalist colleagues who were in Barcelona for the Games recall how they all went that night to watch the U.S. hoops Dream Team in action in Badalona, and how none of them even knew who Smadja was. No one in the Israeli delegation had even talked about the option of the judoka winning a medal. But Smadja tore up the rule book, won all his six bouts in record time, and caused the Israeli journalists to race back to the Olympic Village in a taxi to figure out how Israel had ended up all of a sudden with a second medal.
Perhaps that's the reason that Smadja, unlike Arad and Ze'evi, didn't have an easy relationship with the press, which usually gives Olympic medallists the VIP treatment.
Smadja claims that over the years he has received a far less flattering portrayal from the media than other athletes, even though he has coached the national team to considerable success for more than a decade, and is considered an ally of the strong man of Israeli judo, Moshe Ponte, who is the chairman of the Israel Judo Association. Smadja, who recently completed a degree in Sports Management at the Wingate Institute, is the only Israeli to have won a medal both as a competitor and as a coach.
Smadja grew up in the southern town of Ofakim and was coached by his father Maurice, who would set him almost impossible targets. When Smadja returned from Barcelona, his father asked him, "Why just a bronze?" Smadja took silver at the world championships in Japan in 1995 and was considered a strong candidate for a medal at the Atlanta Games the following year, but was knocked out in just the second round. He began coaching in 1996.
The two medals in Barcelona gave a huge push forward to judo in Israel and thousands of kids took up the sport. Having pulled off the impossible, and with great charisma on the mat, Smadja was a mentor to those kids. After retiring from competition, he set up a judo club in the central Israeli town of Even Yehuda, and since 2010 he has coached the national team.
From Smadja's perspective, the successes achieved by his protégés - Or Sasson's bronze medal in Rio, Sagi Muki's gold at the world championships in Japan two years ago, and Peter Paltchik''s golds at the European championships, and at Grand Slams in Abu Dhabi and Paris - are a direct continuation from what happened in Barcelona 29 years ago.
Just before leaving for Tokyo, Smadja put up a post on Facebook about going to his fifth Olympics, and about his charges Or Sasson, Sagi Muki, Peter Paltchik, Tohar Butbul, Tohar Butbul, Li Kochman and Baruch Shmailov, who he describes as "the best group in Israeli sports."
"I also prepare myself physically and mentally," he wrote. "I know that all of us, the athletes and the coaches, are heading for a roller coaster, with a lot of ups and downs and the full spectrum of emotions. I know that I won't sleep much throughout the competition and when the first judoka goes out onto the mat in the Budokan, the martial arts hall in Tokyo, my pulse will race as if I were out there on the mat.
"I know what it's like to go out onto the Olympic mat with the whole country watching you, crossing their fingers for you, and believing in you. You are always going to be nervous on an occasion like that, no matter how much experience or how many titles you have.
"The Olympic Games are a dramatic event in the life of an athlete, they can even be traumatic. If you win, you realize a dream, the significance of which you couldn't have understood up to that moment. If you don't win, then you are simply left with feelings of having missed out, and of disappointment. The judo team has six bullets in the chamber and each one of them has a chance of hitting the target. I'm sure they will all do everything they can to rise above themselves and fight till the last to represent their country in the best possible manner."
Windsurfer Gal Fridman, 45, is the only Israeli athlete to have won two Olympic medals, including the coveted gold. He lives in Kibbutz Sdot Yam in northern Israel, which is considered the hub of Israeli sailing.
In 2005, both of Fridman's Olympic medals were stolen from his parents' home. The gold medal was returned to Fridman after a girl found it in a forest near Fureidis, an Arab village just north of Sdot Yam. The bronze medal was never recovered.
"People are always asking me if there have been any developments, but it's not as if someone was looking for it," Fridman said in a recent TV interview. "To me, it doesn't matter. It would have been nice to show the kids and grandchildren, but at the end of the day, it's just a piece of metal. No one took my achievements away from me."
After retiring from windsurfing, Fridman coached for a while but gave it up because he felt greater tension than when he was competing himself. Responsibility for others was too much for him.
"People tend to remain in their comfort zone, and going out to do something new is difficult," he says. "But you gain a lot from doing other things. I went out of my comfort zone. I competed in mountain bike and road racing cycling competitions. I did lots of different sports. I still ride, but only occasionally. I'm always changing fields and learning new things. I got into photography; I still take photographs and I'm also busy with a new thing, training drone pilots."
"I dreamt about winning the Olympics and of being a world champion. I made both those dreams come true [Fridman won the world championship in 2002]. I dreamt about having a family and kids. That has also come true. I am married [to Michal, an architect] and I have four children [two boys and two girls, ages three-and-a-half to 12]. I quit when I was at the top."
"I often talk with people on the street who recognize me. They say 'thank you', 'you made us really happy' and 'well done, we are proud of you'. People actually remember where they were when the finals were broadcast from Athens. It's moving."
Yarden Gerbi thinks Israel can win medals in Tokyo, with at least two of them coming in her discipline – judo. Yes, she misses competition, the atmosphere, the adrenaline and the butterflies in her stomach. No, she really doesn't miss training. "If somebody were to come up with a way to compete without training, I would go back," she says.
Gerbi, 32, remembers the day she won her medal in Rio. "Twenty-two years of my career boiled down to one day – a day that was very complex. In the first round, I received a tough Cuban opponent. In the quarter-finals, I faced a Brazilian, and the refereeing wasn't fair. There was a big possibility that it would all come to an end there. But I managed to elevate myself mentally, and further down the line [in the repechage round] I beat some strong girls. In the bronze medal fight, my coach, Shani Hershko, was sent off, because the referees ruled that he had given me instructions during the bout, and not during breaks, which is allowed."
"It's true that I would have liked to win the Olympic gold, but it's been five years since then and I've moved on. I am happy and at one with myself."
High-tech company Melanox and the credit-card firm CAL sponsored Gerbi to the tune of hundreds of thousands of shekels ahead of the Rio Games and had planned to support her in Tokyo as well. But Gerbi had her own plans. Her retirement from judo in October 2017 came after a long process that included several operations.
"I trained and everything was great, but after a while, I was back in the routine of two training sessions a day, and seeing the same girls and going through the same training camps. I realized I had to set myself a new goal. That was the European championship in April 2018 in Tel Aviv. I wanted to appear before fans in Israel.
"But then I began to feel that I just don't have the strength to get up every day at six in the morning to push myself to the limit in every training session. You have to give your brain orders, and I felt that I just wasn't managing to. My motivation was down, the fire had gone out. I realized that I had already achieved everything I wanted to - an Olympic medal, a world championship, dozens of medals, and sportsperson of the year in Israel."
Q: Did you know what you would do the day after judo?
"When you retire from an Olympic sport, there is no unemployment benefit. You leave without any salary at all, and you have to reinvent yourself. I had to think about what I was good at. I didn't have a 'Plan B', I didn't know what to do. I only knew that I wouldn't go on with judo, because I didn't have the motivation."
Q: How much did your judo skills help you succeed in the physical and mental challenges of 'Survivor,' where you took third place?
"My entire essence comes from judo. Motivation, determination, restraints, patience, and other things that I learned on a day-to-day basis. That's why judo is so incredible and special. It comes from Japanese culture. The Japanese bow to each other when they say hello; they do so out of respect - respect for the coach and respect for one and other. Those are the values I grew up on. All of that comes out in 'Survivor'. How to look at things, patience in moments of crisis, and how to fight for missions as if there is no tomorrow. All of that comes from judo."
Gerbi currently lives in Portugal where she works in real estate. "Apart from that, I also invented a digital course to develop mental resilience in kids. I called the course 'Brain Strength' and I compare the brain to a muscle. I also hope to develop other new ideas, and I'm living the moment. At the end of the day, the tools I received from being an athlete make me understand that I need to work hard for my goals and that if I work hard, I can achieve them."
Q: You don't get stopped in the street in Portugal by people asking for a signature or a selfie?
"That's right. Nobody knows me there. When I come back to Israel, there is no anonymity for me, but that's fine. At the moment, I'm shooting a new series of 'Ninja Israel' where I'm a commentator. I've really gone deep into the subject, and it's quite exciting."
Unlike in the 2016 Rio Games, Or Sasson, the only Israeli medal winner competing in Tokyo, is not going into the Games in optimal condition.
Given his physical condition and problematic preparation, it's safe to say that it will be a big surprise if he wins a medal this time around. A month ago, in the final big warm-up competition, Sasson was knocked out in the first round by an opponent from Kazakhstan after being penalized three times in the bout. He looked tired after having undergone surgery before the competition.
In February 2019, the Elite Sports Department removed him from its gold team because he hadn't won a medal at a European or world championship in the past two years. As a result, his monthly stipend was cut. His coach Oren Smadja was not happy with the decision and made his displeasure public in a Facebook post where he however thanked Bank Yahav, Sasson's sponsor, for its support, and that of the Israel Judo Association, which made up the difference.
With many competitions canceled during the coronavirus pandemic, Sasson found himself exploring other directions and ended up appearing as a felafel in the TV show "The Masked Singer."
Objectively speaking, Sasson faces a difficult task in Tokyo as all his major rivals in his weight category (+100kg) - Teddy Riner of France, Hisayoshi Harasawa of Japan, and Rafael Silva of Brazil, the joint bronze medal winner with him in Rio - will be competing. More tough competitors have also joined the pool. Among them, Guram Tushishvili of Georgia, and the champion from Rio 2016 in the -100kg class, Lukas Krapalek of the Czech Republic, both of whom have gone up a weight category.
After being knocked out of the world championships last month, Sasson posted on Instagram: "Am I capable of winning another meal in Tokyo? Of course I am. No defeat on the path will move me away from my target. For me, there is no other choice. I choose to get up and move toward my greatest target in life at the moment, a target that is on the verge of the super-human."
Over the weekend, 19-year-old Avishag Samberg joined this exclusive club, winning the bronze in taekwondo at the Tokyo Games. Samberg is the first taekwondoin to ever represent Israel in this sport in the Olympics and her win represents Israel's 10th medal overall.
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